listen to the quiet

note: this is the first of a two-part series.

do you remember how i wrote to you about the dimming of my shining star? this is something that has continued to be the theme of my experience of life for the past few weeks. for example . . .

* even though the pivotal and holy conversation i shared with kirsten a couple months ago helped me see that writing has become less important to me than sitting with people in the quiet, broken, imperfect, shattered, and redemptive places of their hearts, i have had to keep laying it down. in recent weeks, as i have found myself surrounded by so many beautiful books already in the world, by friends who are publishing new books and completing novels and drafting book proposals with words that seem to have fallen down like manna from the heavenly skies, i have been thankful for these wonderful gifts in the world but have also looked upon them with a measure of wistfulness. no matter how long i have labored in that direction myself, the words just have not come. and even though God is showing me my deeper heart for other things right now, there is still a sadness that comes with the death of a long-held hope. it has been humbling to let this hope go, at least for the time being, when it has been so long tied to my identity and experience of life.

* when we went to california, i was, for the most part, away from blogland. though i would check e-mail and the blogs of my closest friends, i could not even attempt to keep up with the rest. as a result, i began to see a sliver of just how many words are continually being launched into the world. i would pull up my bloglines account and just stare at it. first there were 10 unread posts . . . then 25 . . . then 52 . . . then 110 . . . then 132 . . . then 187. the numbers just continued to grow every day, creating a greater and greater sense of how many voices are speaking out there in the world. and if i never personally contributed anything to the conversation again, no blog posts of my own to add, the posts would just keep coming, and the world would just kept running, churning out more and more words and perspectives and opinions and stories and experiences and lives. it was humbling to realize just how small i really am, in the scope of the big wide world out there that is consistently saying its piece.

* when we went to biola and visited isf, it was so wonderful to have found a community that understands the same deep calling of my heart. they used language like "heart" and "grace" and "journey" and "formation," and i felt like i was home. i could not wait to get started, to take courses that would grow my understanding even deeper, to eventually participate in practical intensives, to be in fellowship with others who are intentional about growth in themselves and in the lives of others. but there was also a measure of humbling that came alongside all of this. it may sound strange, and it is hard for me to admit that i even felt this way, but i felt humbled when i realized how many workers are already working in these fields of harvest. i suppose this tapped into the crusader in me who sometimes wants to blaze a trail that is not yet known, only to find that this particular trail has been revived for quite some time and that many have walked back and forth upon it many times over.

i came home from california pretty discouraged. i've already shared about the ways the trip was different than either of us expected, but now i was adding to the mix a full measure of my own insignificance. there are some days in the aftermath of that trip when my response to all of this was to bow before my God and pray. but most days, i ran away. [clearly, this is nothing new with me.]

here is what running away looked like for me in those handful of days. i would leave my e-mail account open on my screen all day long, my eyes flitting to it constantly to see if there were any new messages, voices from my life affirming my existence. i would check my bloglines account about ten times every hour, so deep was my need to fill the gaping hole inside of me with content i found meaningful, with voices i have come to love. i would scour new blogs for hours, searching for new ones to add to my bloglines, trying to slake my neverending thirst for more and more content. i would check news headlines twice an hour, trying to keep my hands around a globe so vast that it exceeds my grasp no matter how faithfully i tried to capture all of it in me. i would dig deeper into books and ask kirk if he wanted to watch more movies. i would curl myself under the covers and fall asleep for handfuls of hours with my sweet kitty diva close to my side.

really, i was alternating between a chaos of noise and utter oblivion.

i knew it wasn't working. it left me feeling even emptier than before, and all i knew was that i felt very, very small and alone in my experience. kirk saw what was going on and expressed his concern, but i felt helpless to explain these compulsions or turn away from them. i knew God was there, that he wanted me close, but still i fled. i could not face him. i could not sit still and stare into his eyes or let him put his arms around me. i wanted to be alone, but i feared this very aloneness all the same, more than anything else in the world.

after about five or six days of this, kirk encouraged me to close the laptop, put it down, and spend some time in the quiet with God. as he left the room, i pulled the covers close and turned onto my side, staring at the floor below. i shook my head, my eyes swimming with tears, my mouth closed and lips turned down. i let the tears fall and just tried to listen to the space inside that i'd been trying so hard to fill.

i heard it speaking of a need to feel significant, and yet of feeling so small and insignificant. i heard it speaking of the terror of this reality, of its helplessness in that place, of its being so exhausted from trying. and then i heard another voice.

listen to the quiet.

this one line echoed again and again in my consciousness for the next three days straight. listen to the quiet. i heard it at almost every turn. listen to the quiet. every time i was tempted to turn to my computer one more time. listen to the quiet. every time i turned to the stack of books standing on the little table next to my bed. listen to the quiet. every time i wanted to pull a movie out of the cupboard, any movie that might satisfy that ache inside of me or distract me from its presence. listen to the quiet.

and so i did. as completely frustrating as it was to hear that voice in those places, as much as i wanted it to just go away already, i heeded the invitation.

i wish i could say that i got answers from the quiet, but i didn't. pretty much, i sat there in silence, no words going out or coming in. the silence didn't say much. in fact, it said nothing at all. i heard no words from God, other than this short four-word phrase, over and over again, which obviously runs a little short on directives other than the one i'm to heed in the present moment.

if i learned anything from the quiet, i learned how hard it is for me to sit inside of it. the introvert in me has always been content to sit quietly with a book, to journal quietly, to have a quiet morning at home, and yet that kind of quiet is not the same as this kind. this quiet was about keeping a discipline of silence not filled with other activity or any incoming or outgoing information, no matter how quietly those activities and information flow. with this kind of quiet, i learned i have so far to go.

and i guess you could also say that the quiet made me face the truth of myself, how quickly i would rather run to other gods to fill me up, how much my insides are hurting, how many questions about my existence still go unanswered. but as much as the feeling of insignificance has pervaded my experience of life of late, i could no longer abide the message that i was, in truth, insignificant. after all, the God of the universe was speaking four words to me over and over again. this means he sees me and all the many details of my life, enough to speak into it. it means that what is going on, all of it, every last thread of my story that is connected to whole handfuls of other threads in my story . . . all of them are meaningful: full of meaning.

and this, my friends, was a hope i could not evade any longer, even if i had no other words or directives to follow in the thick of all this silence. it was a truth i had to sit with, to let just be, even though the hole inside my chest that wanted to be filled and given some sense of direction kept revealing itself to me in greater, more frequent intervals.

the dimming of a shining star

have you ever suffered from shining-star syndrome?

shining-star syndrome defined: the aspiration to shine brighter than any other star in the galaxy. the secret wish to be the best equipped of any other star to rescue beings cloaked in darkness or partial shadows by bearing the brightest and shiniest light in the universe. the hope of perpetually existing as the greatest star ever to light the world [the sun] and therefore to be the north star toward which all other stars and every other created being turns for its energy, light, and existence.

in other words, the syndrome of all kinds of messed-up, mixed-up, mashed-up, mushed-up, ultimate fallen-starness around.

have you ever suffered from this? i have. and right now, God's trying to turn that dimmer switch on down. and it really hurts. it's really, truly embarrassing. it totally humbles. it makes me feel like a falling star. like i am plummeting to the ground at warp speed and will soon hit the earth and explode and instantaneously reform into scattered shards of dead rock, never to be heard from or seen in brilliant, shining glory again. it makes me want to lope around to the other hemisphere of the globe in some kind of crazy, misguided attempt to disappear from my own orbit.

i don't know about you, but i picked up this little proclivity in childhood and have carried it with me ever since. i know it's part of my participation in the fallen race that began when one woman and one man decided they wanted nothing more than to be like God, and who were shown the way to that desire by a being who had wanted the exact same thing. but he fell, and they fell, and, well, here i am: fallen, too.

but i know it's also part of what we pick up along in life. at least, that's been my experience. the exposure to great humiliations at a young age informed me that the only way to survive and thrive was to be above reproach, immune to humiliation, and therefore perpetually above the rest of the world. and i somehow made the jump to think that in this perfection, i would invite the praises of men instead of derision, to become essential for all positive outcomes instead of inconsequential to any, and to be the one with divine answers instead of just fumbling, human-sized questions.

when i first learned this was my way, it confounded and disgusted me. i went about slowly unlearning it. it look a long, long time. but God was faithful, and he showed up, and he taught me a new and better way: that humanity, imperfection, mystery, equality, humility, and the great unknowing states of our existence are not only breathtakingly beautiful but exactly as God would have them be. we are human; he is God. we don't have it all together; he does. there's no expectation of perfection on our part; there's every expectation of perfection on his. we can all just let go, sit back, look around, and breathe.

i lived in the jubilant peace of these revelations for a pretty long time and sought to offer them to others in need of refreshing life whenever the need crossed my path. eventually, i learned that this was an essential footprint God planted in me so that he could more fully walk the earth and incarnate grace in these places through my human hands. all this was good. i was happy to be a vessel and overjoyed to have received such grace from him in my story.

except that now, he seems to be wanting more. he seems to be showing me more of my flawed, fallen starness. he seems to be wanting to dim that super-shiny star on down so that he can dispose it toward a different kind of energy than it currently exhibits.

i am sure there will be many, many seasons like this in my life. seasons where i am vividly aware of habits and beliefs and behaviors i thought i had unlearned coming back to be unlearned again, of ugly ways i relate to God, myself, and others that were never God's design at all, of graces i need to learn to accept when i've already learned to accept them to certain degrees already. even though i know that this is the way of our life in him, our continual sanctification that circles and circles and circles around over and over again on themes and lessons familiar that necessarily take a lifetime to unfold . . . even though i know this, it does not make this present dimming any less painful. i feel like i am starting over. and honestly? it makes me really mad.

it took me a few days to realize that mad is what i really feel. but now that i have located it, i am crying out to God and asking why he has to do this. he has already taken and formed so much in me in these past years, and pretty much entirely with my quite willing, though often clueless and in-pain, cooperation. why more? why now? were these past years just not good enough? have they been deemed not good enough to be useful? will there always be another season of waiting to be useful in ministry as he takes me through yet another growth spurt again? will i never be ready to go? will i always be deemed unworthy? because unworthy is what i'm beginning to feel.

please hear my heart . . . i don't mean to say that i am, in fact, unworthy or that God is not, has not, and will not use me. only that it feels that way right now, when i am being shown a very dark terrain of my heart and feel myself entering into a pretty intense time of cleansing by his hands. i also don't mean to say that i am never meant to shine like a star in the sky. only that he never meant me to desire after shinier, more brilliant hues than he made me to offer. only that i've been created to offer light that shines from a source wholly other than myself, whereas i'm coming to see how much i still try to self-perpetuate my light. only that i'm learning just how black my self-perpetuated light-source really is.

and so these days, the dimming. i am being confronted on every side of my fallen humanity. i am being presented quite frequently with my pride. my covetousness. my envy. my self-exaltation. my craving for the praise of men. my manipulations. my doubt. my well-planned exits of escape. my drivenness toward distraction. my sloth. my greed. my criticisms. my poor judgment. my impulsivity. my denial. my anger. my judgments. my wrath. my competitive edge. my evil intents. my mind-numbing planning. my fear. my unforgiveness. my jealousies.

it is not pretty, folks. i am embarrassed to even air these things here. i feel like that initial breaking i shared with you here was just a quick and expedient initial hose-down in preparation for a full-throttle, firehose-sized cleansing that has arrived with every intention of staying to rain down pelting showers on me for a very long time. at least, that is what seems to be happening now. i am not pleased about it. i am already rather exhausted. but i pray for the strength and faithfulness to remain here while he cleanses me in a way that ultimately bursts forth an eternal, brilliant beam of his own self.

holding courage

it's been a rough week. last sunday, we learned that kirk's best friend's dad died quite unexpectedly. it has been a week of mourning with our friends. at school, i had papers and presentations due almost every day of the week, with still two papers to go this weekend. it has been a week of treading to keep my head above water. throughout the week, different situations popped up that made us feel half in california and half in florida, not fully present in either place and still not fully knowing how all this will play out. it has been a week of perplexity and surprise.

i keep trying to find a still place, but i'm pretty unsuccessful most of the time. i shared with one friend this afternoon that i feel myself breaking, being asked to give something over but not being quite sure what that something even is. i told another friend today that i feel such shame for being in this place, that i feel myself heaping the pressure on my head and shoulders to have things worked out, put together, waving proudly with a flag in my hand from the top of a very high hill.

but that's not the way i feel at all. i feel a bit lost, a bit broken, a bit like God is trying to take my favorite stuffed bear from my hands. that's what the breaking feeling feels like: an awareness of a comfort in my arms that is not God's comfort but my own stuffed bear, worn down from being held, with matted spots from my tears and one lost button eye. it feels like he wants me with open hands and open arms, nothing in between us, when that comfortable bear in my arms makes me feel so warm and secure.

it's hard to believe right now that God's presence will fill up that space in my empty arms.

heather has been talking about death-to-self lately, both on her blog and in my comment space. when she first mentioned it to me, i accepted it warmly and quite optimistically. of course death-to-self is good when it comes from God, i thought, and it feels so good to feel him move through us when it's him moving and not ourselves. and i have sincerely experienced that as true. except that as the day and week wore on, i began to see glimpses of the self that still needs that death right now. the pride and the self-dependence. the seize for control and the lack of faith.

these things will hold me back if i do not let them go. and yet still i won't let go. and so, the breaking. i'm breaking. i am trying not to break, and yet still i am breaking. and it makes me feel so sad.

so tonight, i am trying to hold courage in my hands, instead of my warm bear. perhaps tomorrow the courage will be replaced with God himself. tonight, that is my hope.

the battle between faith and sight

so basically, i'm just going to come right out and tell you that kirk and i believe God is moving us to california. to orange county. in august. to enroll in the spiritual formation and soul care program at isf. to be trained to offer what God created us to offer. to bring that to those embarking into deep soul journeys there. to join with those already at work in these fields of harvest there, and perhaps, just perhaps, to create something new, with them, together.

on that thursday when so much crazy conversation happened with tammy in her comment space, when my heart had been uncovered so that only the bald truth of it remained, when i was shaken into seeing how God can blow the roof off expectations and create new rooms of possibility, kirk was having his own kind of day with God. i won't share the details here because it is his own story to have and to hold, but it is enough to relay that it was soul-shaking and penetrating in its own right for him, too.

that night, as we were preparing for bed, i looked over at kirk and said, "what if God is going to move us back to california to take the isf program?" this is something that has been on our radar screen for a couple years and which we've looked into more deeply a couple different times, always feeling the time just has never been quite right, quite yet, even though it has always been near and dear to our hearts. but maybe, just maybe, with all that has been ripening inside of us now, the time for isf had now, also, become ripe.

and then, on a bit of a whim, i said, "and what if afterward, he wants to do something crazy, like have us purchase a house that can be used for spiritual direction for people?" then i steamrolled this crazy notion forward even more and said, "we could use each room in the house as an office space for each spiritual director who works there, and people can make appointments to come sit with them and process through their journey and what God is trying to work out in them. and i could work there, and maybe sarah could work there, and maybe my other friend sara could work there, and maybe even you could, too!"

it was a crazy idea.

but it started to grip me. i could see the house. it kinda looked like this on the outside. and in my mind, i could see an open room directly inside the front door that could be used as a reception space. with three or four rooms going off to the side and down the hallway that could be used as offices for the spiritual directors. with a kitchen and dining room gathering space in the middle. and with an upstairs that, just perhaps, could be used for administration.

and then i made the connection back to all tammy had said earlier that very same day about non-profits. and how i had felt so resistant to that idea when i first considered it, but how energizing it now felt to imagine running a place like this, where i could cast and uphold the vision but also be working one-on-one with individual people in their unique spiritual journeys each and every day, too.

so then i kind of freaked out. something that had been an off-the-cuff, just-stumbled-into-my-brain idea had already, in the span of just a few minutes, crystallized into an entire plan for a house plopped down into orange county, california, complete with a detailed exterior and interior, with all kinds of rooms and spaces and all variety of achingly beautiful, imaginative, soulful, caring, loving, deeply spiritual people moving around on the inside.

i didn't quite know what to do with all this, so i did the only obvious thing i knew how to do. i prayed. "lord, you know all that is transpiring here, and all that has been transpiring, within both of our hearts and in all these conversations happening all over the place. i don't know what to do with what you've made my heart to offer. but here we are with these thoughts of california and isf again, and now this crazy idea about a house. is it possible for you to . . . confirm . . . any of this?"

i know sometimes God just doesn't work that way. sometimes God doesn't tell his people where he is taking them. he didn't tell abraham. he didn't tell moses. he just said go to a place i will show you. just keep walking in darkness, and i will get you there.

so i knew asking him to confirm these thoughts was kinda risky. and i told him i knew that. i told him he could do anything he wanted with us. he could choose to keep us in darkness until the last possible moment, when suddenly a stone would appear in the water for us to step on just before we would have landed ourselves in the deep to drown.

but i also knew that sometimes he does confirm. not always, but sometimes. so i asked it in a small voice. knowing he knows just how little i trust myself these days to have any idea about what is going on. knowing he knows that i'm full of second-guessing and discouragement at my own ability to discern his actual voice, instead of just my own. so, yes. in all that, this tiny-voiced prayer: "if you want to, God, would you . . . confirm . . . any of this?"

well.

the next day, kirk sent me a link to a beautiful memoriam and poem written by david whyte in honor of the late john o'donohue, whose poem i had recently quoted here for my beautiful soul friend, kirsten. on the day kirk sent the link, there was an announcement at the bottom of the page about a poetry contest hosted by an organization called spiritual directors international. at first, i clicked on the advertisement because i was thinking about the beautiful poem kirsten had just shared with all of us, and i wanted to see if her poem would qualify to enter. unfortunately, it didn't, but pretty soon i was clicking around on their website and found a page discussing the question, "what is christian spiritual direction?"

just about every single explanation given on that page in response to this question resonated with a place so deep within me that i felt like my soul was swimming up from deep waters to make actual, living contact with my heart. the response was just that physical. i felt like every single part of my core being had found its true home.

that's general signpost number one.

later that day, i got an e-mail from terri. she had been following the conversation in tammy's comment thread on the previous day, and she wanted to share with me privately that she sees in me something of a care pastor or spiritual director. she was wondering, had i ever looked into any spiritual direction programs?

well, yes. in fact, i had. isf, to be exact. and funny you should mention . . .

that was general signpost number two.

it seemed pretty clear God was showing up and showing off to me that day. he was making his way through my prayer. he was affirming that this is indeed the path of my heart. he was putting a little arrow-pointer on the road saying, "keep going this way."

so i said okay. i will, God.

but i still went to bed that night with questions. what about that house idea . . . ? did God want to show up and show off for that, too? or would that be too much to ask, on top of everything he'd already just done?

so i decided to talk to him about it. "lord, you are God. you can do all that you want. i will keep walking in this direction, and you can use it however you want. but as far as this house idea goes . . . is it your idea, or just another one of those bizarre, newfangled ones kirk and i are prone to having from time to time? might you also want to . . . confirm . . . your thoughts on this thought, too?"

and then i went to sleep.

the next day, kirk and i decided to check out a catholic retreat center in town that we had just learned offers training in spiritual direction. (this was one of the discoveries i had made on that spiritual director website the day before.) even though it was saturday and we likely wouldn't be able to find anyone to talk to that day, we wanted to take another step. just to see what we might see.

the visit was brief. we walked around a bit, saw a thomas merton retreat going on, discovered a really cool tree, and then left. we had a feeling it wasn't the right place for us, but it felt good to take some kind of concrete step in the right direction.

but then, as we were driving around, we found ourselves in a pretty commercial area of town, crowded with big-box stores like target and bed, bath, and beyond and linens 'n things and borders. all the commercialism felt like it started to crowd close around, and i started to feel really, really funky as we were driving along. it kinda felt like all the air was being sucked out of the car and out of me. i started slumping down in my seat. when kirk asked what was wrong, i could barely communicate. basically, it felt like the energy of God was being displaced for the energy of his enemy.

needless to say, kirk turned the car toward home. as soon as we walked in the door, i went straight for the bedroom, laid face-down on the bed, covered my head with my arm, and began to cry. i started praying out loud to God by myself in the room, telling him that i didn't know what was wrong or why i was crying. i just kept saying that over and over. i didn't know what was wrong or why i was crying. but i couldn't stop crying, and i couldn't stop feeling like something was wrong.

kirk came in the room and started talking to me. it took him a moment to realize i was crying. but when he did, he came close and let me rest my head on his chest, and he asked if i could tell him what was wrong. i shook my head, tears still streaming. i really didn't know what was wrong.

"well, can you try to talk about it?" he asked.

and then a torrent of words i had no idea were inside me began pouring out of my mouth. what makes us think this house idea could ever happen? what makes us think we could try to buy a house in the middle of orange county, california, of all places, one of the most expensive places to try to buy a home? what makes us think we could ever know how to fundraise the money for some kind of project like that? nobody even knows what spiritual direction even is, so how could they want to give money to help create something like that? and what makes us think we could run that house on donations, just letting people pay whatever they're able to pay, anonymously, when they come to meet with someone? how are we going to pay salaries to spiritual directors on that kind of setup? what me, fundraise? what me, run something like this? how are we supposed to even let people know that we're there to offer them some kind of service like this, that they don't even know they might need? we're there to just love on them? we're there to walk with them through their journeys? what the heck does that even mean? and how the heck could any of this ever happen? and who am i to think i can do any of it, even the most itty-bitty parts? i have nothing. nothing.

and then kirk just said quietly, "maybe that's because it's exactly the kind of thing God can do. it's the kind of thing that lets him do it all, just like he does best."

which only made me cry even harder because i knew what he said was true. and that perhaps it was the exact reason we should keep walking in this direction. suddenly i was confronted with the thought, perhaps this is God showing up to answer my specific prayer. is this house idea yours, God? yes, christianne, because it's something only i can do. (but even in that moment, and even still, i've still been asking the question, doubting that i know for sure. and that's okay.)

basically, i felt in that moment that i had absolutely nothing to offer except my heart. and maybe a little business training on the side. but pretty much, just my heart. i had no resources. i had no spiritual formation training. i had no house. i had no manpower. i had no fundraising experience. i had no grant-writing skills. i had no contacts. and i was all the way in florida, far away from the place i thought all this was meant to be. i guess you could say that i also had no idea . . . how this would happen, i mean.

but you know what that also means, don't you? it means it would have to be all God. every single last bit of it. it would have to come about through the vehicle of prayer and the vast provision of his resources, plucked out of heaven and handed down to earth. and that scared the crap out of me. even though i've trusted him with many things before, this has got to be requiring of me -- of both of us, actually -- the most ruthless trust of all.

but we've said yes. we have no idea how any of this will come about and every idea of what is required. we need to apply for the spiritual formation program at isf (which in and of itself is going to be no easy feat), and we need to get accepted. we need to finish our degree programs here. we need to find a place to live in the orange county area, and we need to find jobs to support ourselves once we're there. we need to do all this while still living in florida. then we need to move ourselves from florida to california, which will cost a lot of money and, what's more, be quite a life-shift for kirk, who has lived in florida his entire life. we need to get student loans for the spiritual formation program, while student loan funding is on a bit of a downturn right now. and we need to, eventually, determine whether anything is really meant to be pursued when it comes to this house idea, and then uncover all the appropriate needs related to moving in that direction.

it's a lot. right now we are walking by faith, not sight, and we keep doing this because we cannot shake that God is in it. we wake up every day and ask each other how california feels that day. we ask each other at noon, when we see each other for lunch. we ask each other at home, when our days have come to an end. and we ask each other in bed, before we close our eyes for sleep. how does california feel today? how does isf feel today? how does the house idea feel today? how does moving feel today? how does finding work in los angeles feel today? all of which ultimately means, is God still confirming it in your spirit?

and the answer has always been yes.

My Heart Shouts Her Way Into My Consciousness

If you had spent any amount of time with me in the past few days, you would have felt the mood surrounding me to be that of heartbreak. Deep sadness. Grief. Fear. Long, thick disappointment. Pain. Disbelief. Spurts of anger that did their best to flash brightly, only to flicker a brief instant before fizzling without fanfare, giving birth to the mother of all horrible realities: shame.

It began over the holidays, with the awful, scary emotions that stirred up from my deep without any forewarned explanation. I was in freefall mode, only these past few days realizing my heart had closed up shop on interpretations of my life that simply no longer worked. I suppose my heart knew all along, knew it in the deep interior rooms that got locked away before I was ever conscious that heart had a person living inside of it, before I ever knew she needed care, before I ever knew I had chosen not to choose her, going instead with forces outside myself that taught me to survive.

I'm older now. Now I know I have a heart and that we share a name given only to the two of us, inextricably bound forever, her and me. She has unlocked some of the interior rooms in recent years, now moves freely in and out of those rooms she has learned I am trustworthy to guard, the ones I will fight fiercely to protect and make safe because they are her sanctified abode.

But there are more rooms inside there, rooms that have long been locked and bound and strapped with heavy leather strips a stitching awl cannot sever. She is wise, that one. She learned long ago she cannot trust me with some things, that I will quickly and easily abandon her in favor of other loves like a tiny child left at the curb by a parent too preoccupied by the concerns of his or her own head, the young girl's soft, small hand reaching for the handle just as the car pulls away and speeds far, far from there, the driver's mind already racing elsewhere with no thought for what got left behind until many hours later.

I think she has learned, though, that I am learning to listen. She has seen me protect her in the main rooms, has allowed me to invite other visitors to come and spend time there, trusts that those visitors are safe and is therefore increasing her trust in me.

Perhaps that is why what happened over the holidays happened. She's learning she has a voice, learning she knows how to shout, and that now I have the ears to listen and will likely choose her over anything else if I know it is her that's doing the shouting. So, timing it just right, she let out an ear-piercing shriek that wailed and wailed and wailed for fourteen days on end. And I got it. I listened. After I tried for most of that time to drown her out. And after I recovered from the shock and temporary hearing loss.

Then began the hard work. For the first time in years, I have begun using a journal. This is our journals, hers and mine. Most times I use it to channel my own thoughts as I seek to work out this new reality; other times I hand her the pen and let her say whatever the hell she wants. Sometimes I talk directly to her. Sometimes I talk to God. Sometimes I just talk to myself. I do this several times a day, whenever the noise of my own head or the sadness of my own heart gets too loud or deep to handle it on my own. Then I go: me, and her, and God, together in that small book. It is a saving grace.

This is not an easy work, the unlocking of these new doors. I carry enough reverence for her and for those locking mechanisms to know that being invited down these hallways and anywhere near these hiding places is something to undertake with great humility. I am learning not to defend myself; she doesn't want to hear it. I am learning to listen; she's more than happy to speak if she believes I really want to hear. I am learning even greater gentleness; she will recoil and hide again if I'm not careful with my moves, and I will be left to fend again in my old devices, which have only become more solitary and suffocating since she opened this new hallway and invited me in.

Most of the time, the work of this is done in solidarity, the two of us together, alone. Other times it involves speaking her truth out loud. That is the scariest part for me, but it's also her biggest test. She watches me warily, hanging back with great hope in her huge, deep-set eyes full of such feeling and depths I don't yet know the fullness of, but they are eyes that also flicker with fear and doubt that I will actually shoulder our life out there with others who may not understand and may want me to assign my loyalty to them instead. I know each one is a test, though, thankfully, and each one I face is yet another moment of asking myself the very same question again and again: What kind of person will you choose to be, Christianne?

It's heartbreaking work, as I said at the beginning. Mostly because life with my heart in the context of other people has meant an unexpected change of seasons, perhaps permanently. It has involved speaking my heart's truth in scary, dark places to those who may not understand, who have demonstrated that they do not, in fact, understand, and I turn to see my beautiful heart racing away like a squirrel, only the flash of white on the underside of her tail the reminder of what I had promised to do but am now tempted to betray in a compromise of truth. And so I turn back again, facing the truth head-on, deep breath, no matter the pain or humiliation it causes me for all the pain and humiliation she has already suffered, no matter how many of these encounters in the world tempt me to steep myself in all those emotions I listed at the beginning of this post so that I will turn and abandon my closest joy. This is me, defending her honor. I hope to serve her well.

A Beginner's Thoughts on Politics

Last night, Kirk and I previewed a DVD copy of a movie he'll be promoting this month and next. The film is called Article VI. It's about the interplay of faith and politics. You can check out the trailer here or here. (Personally, I find the trailer a little raw, and it certainly can't be faulted for not sparking controversy -- but perhaps that is its intention.)

The film is a documentary, not intended to promote any particular view or any particular candidate, even though the filmmaker is a Mormon. It's intended as a conversation starter. For instance, how has religion historically impacted politics? How is it impacting the '08 election? Should our religious beliefs dictate our voting behavior?

I'll be frank: it is at times difficult to watch this movie. Filmed in documentary style, it includes live footage of rallies, picketing protests, personal interviews, and religious extremists. Many of these extremists are evangelical Christians that I would not personally want to associate with. At one point, I had to ask Kirk to pause the film because the hatred spewing out of the eyes and mouths and swaggers of people standing on street corners wearing Jesus shirts and waving their Bibles became too much. My eyes could not help welling over with tears. These demonstrations and extreme views that preclude love really must grieve the heart of Jesus.

But I think the extremism of the film is effective. (And to be fair, it eventually moves into providing a more balanced view of evangelicals and the central questions in general.) At least for me, the movie was effective because it got me thinking about my own perspective on humanity and freedom and what America is founded upon. Is America a Christian nation, founded upon Christianity and with an obligation to stay that way, as so many of these demonstrators insisted, or is it founded upon free religious expression for all? I think the latter.

Hugh Hewitt, in a scene where he is interviewed on the film, seemed to say it best: "America is not a Christian country. It is a country that is predominantly populated by Christians. It takes its value system from Christianity. Its great civic religion is very much out of the laws of Moses and the teachings of Jesus Christ. There's no one that can deny that. . . . We are not a Christian republic in the sense that Iran is an Islamic republic. We do not have a Christian version of Sharia that is informing our laws. We have a constitutional order, as it has been from the beginning and as it ought to remain."

This post is not intended as a teaser promotion of the film, though you can choose to see it if you like. (It releases in theatres, with a simultaneous DVD release, on January 15.) This post is also not intended as a blanket statement of my political views. Far from it. I am so far from determining what those are that I would not presume to profess them here. And finally, this post is not intended as an exhortation for how I think other people should vote or believe, politically or in faith matters. I am the last person who would try to say -- or even desire to say -- what I think people should think or do with regards to their vote this year.

Rather, I'm writing this to express what the film stirred up in me and how that impacted my day today and my trajectory toward thinking about this election.

I'm sure you've heard about Hillary's surprising upstage of Barack Obama in New Hampshire this week. This morning, perhaps because of last night's film viewing, I began sifting through some of the articles and op-ed pieces about what happened. I watched the footage of Hillary's emotional response to a coffee shop interview question that likely won her the New Hampshire vote. And then I checked out Barack Obama's website.

I've got to say, I was impressed. Not only did I like the straightforward simplicity of how I could go about learning about him and his positions on the major issues, but I was heartened by his notion of America being a place we all live and make better together. I was inspired by his humble background and his work on the streets of Chicago, where he wasn't afraid to work hard and get his hands dirty in order to see real change happen. He really is a people's man, and I must say I like that in a presidential hopeful. It also says something about the personal political views beginning to form in me that I got teary-eyed twice when I previewed this short introductory video to his history and candidacy. In the end, I wondered if people feel about Barack Obama now the way people felt about John F. Kennedy when he came out of nowhere and took the presidential vote back in 1960.

Personally, I've got a long way to go in working out my political views. I'm registered Republican but have long wondered why this has become the predominant Christian party line if God really cares as much about social justice and compassion as the Bible indicates He does. (And it indicates that He does -- a lot.) I've wondered if I will ultimately vote Democrat in this election, and if I will eventually change parties altogether.

In order to do that, though, I need to learn. So today I finally got started. I went out and purchased the two books so far published by Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father. And I got goosebumps again just reading what feel like incredibly honest words in the introductions to both books. For instance, he says in his biography that one reason he loved working in state politics for a big industrical state like Illinois was because "one sees every day the face of a nation in constant conversation: inner-city mothers and corn bean farmers, immigrant day laborers alongside suburban investment bankers -- all jostling to be heard, all ready to tell their stories." Yes, that reference to everyday people's stories really got to me. I'm pretty sure anyone following this blog knows why. I loved that he seemed to be saying he understands the value of every human being's story and life.

I don't know how I'll vote this year, and I don't know what party line I'll ultimately take. But it's the first election I've ever really cared about, ever really wanted to understand, and so I'm glad at least for the baby steps I'm taking toward a political sensibility (albeit very much a beginner's sensibility) for my life.

The Path to Light and Life

The past few days, I feel like I've been sinking into a quagmire from which I haven't known how to scrabble my way out. I feel like one of those plastic accordion toys from childhood that springs up really long when opened but, when closed, needs to be compressed down real tight, so tight it fits into the palm of your hand once the task of closing it has been accomplished. It takes a little jiggering with that plastic toy to get all the layers of the accordion to fall, one on top of the other, behaving enough to be squashed down flat.

That's how I feel in this place: like I'm jiggering with my heart, trying to squash it down flat, trying to make it behave. Only when I say "behave," I'm really saying that my heart doesn't get to have a voice. That instead, it needs to hurry up and get things back together. That it needs to make other people happy instead of sad, in whatever way it can figure out how to do that. That it needs to fix whatever it broke, and fast.

In other words, I turn on it, disowning it, castigating it, shaming it.

I become so fixated on this -- figuring out some way (any way!) to fix what I have done, to reverse the pain I'm causing, to smooth down these rough edges I've now made sharp by speaking aloud some dark and scary thoughts in a relationship -- that I barely notice what is happening to my heart. It is being squashed like an accordion, forced to fit into perfect symmetry so it can be closed down into watertight quarters. It is being covered with my fist and turned over and over like Play-Doh that's being smashed into a tiny ball. It is being lowered into a deep, dark well, looking up at me from the slowly lowering bucket, my silhouette a shadow in the light of life above, my hand on the chain its own betrayal, a quick flick of my wrist upending the bucket as my heart freefalls into the watery depths below where it will go nowhere but down, down, down.

When I was at the monastery last week, there was a brief 12-hour period on Thursday when I was set free from these chains of suffocation and despair. I felt like some invisible string had been cut that allowed my heart to roam free and breathe the fresh, clean air under the blue sky in a dandelion-filled meadow. And in that period of time, you will not believe the kind of life that sprang out of the many little nooks and crannies of my heart. First, it was thoughts like, "This is who I am" or "This is who I am becoming" as I stumbled upon or remembered different thoughts or truths of myself. Then it moved to thoughts like, "This is what matters to me in relationship" and "Maybe I will do this or that with my life."

The world felt full of possibility. I began to feel industrious and productive. I felt incredibly creative and willing to try things I was averse to before, especially in my writing, willing to tinker and play. I felt greater ownership of who I am as an individual and where I am going. I felt responsible for myself and my life, and that was a good feeling instead of a scary one. I felt aware of my separateness from every other human being on this earth, and was faced with the idea that such separateness was right and good. I thought about what made up my idea of relational health, and I felt an awareness of new life in owning these values in my life and relationships.

Unfortunately, that romp through the meadow slowly came to a close that evening. I could feel the darkness and the fear closing back in, perhaps in the dawning knowledge that we would be returning down the mountain the next day. The dark clouds of doom that stifle my heart moved in and hovered for a handful of days. I felt helpless beneath its cover, cowering to its demands like a limp, wet rag. Every timid attempt I made to remember the light and life of that day of play in the meadow was stamped out, like a thin breath expiring through a tiny opening that is present for a moment and then gone.

Last night, though, I caught sight of that playful, romping girl in the meadow. We had been in a small car accident earlier in the evening, a hit on our bumper after one of the signal turns on our drive home from school. In the pressure of the moment at the scene of the accident, we made the decision to let the other driver go. The cars were undamaged, and no one was visibly hurt. The other driver didn't appear to speak much English, nor do I believe he had insurance. He seemed positively nervous that Kirk was calling the police to file a report.

In a state of grace, we decided not to finish the call to the police and let the man go. Yet after he drove away, we were immediately bombarded with second thoughts and doubts. Not to even file a report? Not to get any insurance or contact information at all? Not to even have the freedom to file a claim and allow our insurance company to cover what it could of potential medical expenses? If we woke the next day with damaged necks and shoulders due to whiplash, this meant we were solely responsible for the financial repercussion. In the moment, we had accepted that possibility, but later we regretted its brazenness. Kirk, especially, mourned not having secured better options for us.

Through the evening, we exhibited gentleness toward one another. We kept icing our necks. We prayed for God to be present. I confess that it was hard to sit with the aftermath of a decision that maybe wasn't the wisest to have made, and to watch Kirk wrestle with his own part in having made it as the male protector of our family. But I was also aware that we had made the decision together and that, no matter what, I love this man. One decision would not alter our life in some irreparable way. One decision would not define either of us in God's eyes or the eyes we have toward one another. One decision could not stack up to the many decisions we make every day in care of each other.

And that is where the romping girl in the meadow showed up. We were laying in bed later in the evening, talking quietly and gently with one another, and I said, "I love you." My mind began spinning on love and what it means to me, how that day it had meant choosing to forgive a quick decision because of what I knew of the bigger scope of who Kirk is and the love we share, how it had meant speaking words of gentleness to soothe the pain of shame and regret in his eyes, how it had meant choosing to be in each moment, present, with the unfortunate reality and the love that we share, coexisting. And it felt good to choose this approach to my life.

I guess what I am learning is that living in accord with the stifling accordion's demands seems only to deplete life from my heart, while living with my hands open to the possibilities of who I am becoming, what is important to me, the values I will inculcate in my life, and the way I want to nurture and invite life into my relationships seems to produce a vibrant sense of light and life. Choosing to live each day in light of this second path is difficult because it means leaving the toy accordion back home in the corner of the playroom, perhaps discarded forever, and stepping outside into a world that is fresh and new with very little experience in that world yet behind me. But I think it is worth it. Worth it enough to give it a try. Worth it enough to begin to carve my own distinct, individual path to light and life in my world, whatever form that life and light may take.

It's Been a Hard Two Weeks

I haven't posted much here in the past two weeks. This is partly because we've been on vacation and doing things with other people and away from our usual routine of life at home, which affords me the time and space to think regularly of blog posts and upload photographs and just generally be on the scene. But it's also partly to do with this having been a difficult trip for me in unexpected ways, and I haven't known how to think about this or talk about this, much less write about it in this open space here.

But it's true. In all my expectation of a restful, joy-filled time of visiting with loved ones for two straight weeks, the airplane plopped down on California soil and I proceeded to have an emotional, raw, ragged time of it. My heart's been bleeding open. I have felt a continuous swirling confusion. I have felt pain. I have felt anger. I have felt scared.

I. Did. Not. Expect. To. Feel. This. Way. At. All.

I have wanted to run and hide and not let this be true. I have not -- and still do not -- feel up to the challenge of facing all these facts and feelings, much less surrendering myself to the long process of growth that it will take to move through it and emerge on the other side, somehow stronger and more fully alive. It feels too big and too scary. But I am going to try.

Kirk and I are heading up to Santa Barbara today. We're going to spend two days at our favorite monastery, on top of a hill overlooking the vast ocean, participating in the hours with the brothers living there and taking hikes together. I went to this monastery for a solitary retreat when I first learned I was getting a divorce several years ago; it is the place I went to sit with grief and anger and questions with God. It is the place where I first learned that grief is a process that will double back on itself through the time it takes to move through it. Now I am in a different place, and I am no longer grieving my divorce, but this feels like grief of a different sort. And I am thankful for the quiet time to let it speak, to enter in. I pray that God will meet me there, and hold me, and sit with me in full acceptance and love.

The Spiral Staircase

After spending this past week busy with family and friends -- coffee with Kate (twice!), Joan of Arcadia episode fests with Mom, helping to decorate the family Christmas tree, silliness with You Tube videos with my brother and his fiancee, a blessedly full eight-hour day of conversation with Sara, Christmas at Mom's and Christmas at Dad's, plus introducing Kirk to my 30-plus-member extended family on Christmas night -- Kirk and I set off in my dad's truck this afternoon for a little bit of "us" time. Which led us promptly to our local Borders bookstore. (Of course.)

Kirk intended to pick up a few DVDs since they were having a 3-for-2 sale, but he didn't find what he was looking for. I intended to pick up the classic text on boundaries, since they've been on my mind of late and I think I'm moving into a new season of reestablishing more of them in my life. But along the way, I also picked up a book I didn't expect to find. It's called The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, by Karen Armstrong.

I've seen Karen Armstrong's books around the bookstores for many years, and especially noticed them when I was managing a Barnes & Noble a handful of years ago. She's a guru on comparative religion, with books like A History of God and Islam: A Short History to her credit. For some reason, I have always shied away from her books, and I think this is because I have often confused her for Elaine Pagels, who writes often on the gnostic gospels and whom I therefore have not had much interest in reading.

But when I saw about seven copies of The Spiral Staircase on the shelf today, I picked it up. (As a former bookstore manager, I know seven copies of one book -- in paperback, no less -- equals something probably important, given how limited bookstore shelf space actually is.) I was intrigued by the subtitle's reference to the author's climb out of darkness, which was obviously spiritual in nature, given that the book was in the general religion section. But what specific kind of darkness, I wondered?

Then I read the back of the book, which shared that Armstrong entered a convent at age seventeen in 1962, eager to meet God . . . and left after seven years. The story contained in this book was about her journey into life once outside the convent walls, though it was a journey fraught with difficulty, disillusionment, confusion, illness, and pain. And yet, by the subtitle's promise, it was a journey out of darkness into light.

I sat down on a leather chair and began to read the preface, and I was hooked. She speaks disarmingly about her decision to enter the convent, about what she thought she would find and why she wanted to find it, and about the political tensions of the day, both within and without the Catholic church. Her words carry weight. And her willingness to share with boldness and honesty about the road she has walked, facing even the errors and the pain dead-on, sparing nothing, moved me.

Now I own the book and have just finished the preface. This feels like an important book in my life, in much the same way that Kathleen Norris's The Cloister Walk was important in my life several years ago. I am not exactly sure why this is so, but part of it may have to do with how one learns to have perspective about one's life. For instance, Armstrong shares in the preface that after writing her first book, Through the Narrow Gate, about those seven difficult years she spent as a nun, she published a second book about her first years outside the convent called Beginning the World that she now considers a mistake, saying, "It was far too soon to write about those years. . . . I was certainly not ready to see this phase of my life in perspective." The Spiral Staircase is her attempt to retell that story.

I guess what I love about finding this book is not just the chance to hear her story, which I find intensely interesting, but also how she learned to take a new perspective of her life as she grew through it, even sharing near the end of her preface that "we should probably all pause to confront our past from time to time, because it changes its meaning as our circumstances alter." Fascinating. And somehow laced with grace.

Heightened Sensibilities (Part 3)

On Monday night, Kirk and I had tickets to see David Wilcox. Neither of us had ever heard his music before, though I have friends back home (and one in particular -- you know who you are!) who have recommended him to us for quite some time. We looked forward to hearing what he was all about.

He's a folk artist who blends storytelling with his music. When I talk about blending storytelling, I mean just that: he tells a lot of stories, both in between songs (as he stands there picking his guitar so lyrically and hypnotically) and through his lyrics. He also has a smile a mile wide that flashes at you just before he ducks his head in amazement at the appreciation the audience offers him at the end of his songs. And his laugh . . . well, his laugh will blow you away. It's so totally unexpected, quite high-pitched and sudden and wild. It makes you laugh out loud yourself, to hear it. It makes you smile a mile wide.

The David Wilcox concert was a gift to my heart. On the most superficial level, this is obvious: he talks about heart and story and journey and spirit, and speaks a language of life that is second tongue to the life Kirk and I live every day. It felt like refreshment of the spirit to find another who speaks this language, and one who is called to gently lead others along into this road through his stories and his songs. The audience was completely captivated by him. Most of them were hearing him for the first time, too.

But on another level, it felt like a gift just for me, deeply personalized and wrapped up in a spectacular bow, then dropped right down in my lap. And that's because, as David led us through an hour's worth of his song stories, my own heart took a journey.

First David talked about a two-year trip around the country he and his wife and his son just completed, tooling around in their silver Airstream with a new vista out their window every day. Now, I have never dreamed of taking this particular kind of trip myself. It was fun to rest in gladness for something that meant so much to him and his family without feeling the need to join in.

But this first story spoke to me of freedom, the insides of yourself and the outsides of yourself completely open to all things new and fresh experiences found each day on a long road laid out before you. Again, I feel no need to now go cruising around the States, free of trappings and toils, because Kirk and I feel free of traditional trappings and toils in our life now, plus we love where we live. But I began to think on an interior kind of freedom with this story, the kind of freedom that keeps me, too, open to all things new and fresh experiences found each day on a long road laid out before me: the road of a long life lived with an open and free-filled spirit. Given the conversation Kirk and I had just shared on the previous day, the notion of such interior freedom was a ripe fruit ready to be plucked down as juicy ambrosia for my parched and expiring spirit, a spirit that had lapsed into trying with all its might to play a role it was never meant to play.

Freedom. Mmmm.

David went on to sing of a close encounter with a secret sun, where all our darkness comes undone, leading up to a party of wonder . . . and I felt my own heart come undone, the darkness spilling out as it faces the sun of the enduring love of God, and how such security nudges me into a wide-eyed wonder of life and all that I can see, all that I can feel, all that I can love. I want that kind of wonder, the kind that only comes through a freedom and security found in a love that endures beyond all barriers.

It shouldn't have surprised me that David then led into a song of the mind/heart dichotomy, how the heart wants to say, "Let's go," but the mind says, "I don't know," how the mind can stand stock still, wishing it knew where all the particulars are leading to, how it stands to work and work and work at the courage to jump . . . only to be lost in contemplation, running out of time, about to miss the train that will swiftly carry it along to a new adventure. I do this so well: contemplate, consider, scuff my feet and say that I don't yet know, keeping myself from the fleet-filled jump that will hurl me onto new tracks, out of control yet resting in a greater, sturdier, bulkier control that carries me in its frame as it carries me along to where I need and am meant to be.

The next-to-last song was the capstone of my experience. He spoke of a girl who danced as if moving through liquid music, how the music knew her and moved through her as though the instruments were listening to the music that she played, moving as one body, the music and her soul, as her physical body played out the melody.

When I heard these lyrics, my mind flew back to one beautiful, moon-filled evening I shared with Kirk early in the life of our love. I had flown to Florida for a weekend visit, after months of e-mails and wireless phone signals flying across the country at rapid speed, to see what we were like in real life. On the second night of our visit, he cooked dinner for us at his 1920s-era house: vine-ripe tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella drizzled in balsamic vinegar and basil, sauteed and seasoned green and yellow squash, chunks of marinated beef, and a bottle of red wine. Good conversation. Three huge and brilliant sunflowers in a vase on the table between us. Eva Cassidy playing on the stereo behind us.

Later that evening, we turned down some lights and let the moonlight fill the front room through the wood-slatted blinds and cranked up some grooving music so that it filled the house to bursting. And we danced. Danced. I felt like the girl in the song David Wilcox sang, letting the music flow into me and through me, moving like liquid music in the moonlight, letting my spirit fly unselfconsciously and with grace, eyes closed as I snaked around the room, arms raised, body twirling. Glorious. Free.

Standing here today, struggling as I am with an old perfectionist bent I thought I had finally kicked, I'm not sure where such free-spiritedness has gone. Perhaps, as I shared in a comment on my last post, it must be relearned in this new place as my identity has grown to include wife, student, explorer, writer. Perhaps receiving those new roles has taken its own fair share of time and attention, and now it is time to integrate.

Whatever the case may be, I certainly feel myself on the verge of integration. It will take time and patience and much grace, but here I am, jumping off, risking, trusting in the stronger arms that will catch me and carry me along to where I'm meant to go.

Heightened Sensibilities (Part 2)

On Sunday, I sat up in bed and stared out the stained glass window for a while, unsure what to do with myself. Since I had spent most of Saturday in online shopping mode for Christmas, I wanted Sunday to be a day of redemption and contemplation and heart. But where to start?

Eventually Kirk joined me in this place (he'd already been up and getting things done that morning), and I told him I felt restless, like I wanted to work but didn't want to feel driven. Like I wanted to bow to the holiness of the day but also wanted to be fully alive in it. I told him I felt drawn to work on my book project, but unsure (again) where to begin.

Most people, when I share that I don't know where to begin on this book, tell me that I should break it into smaller chunks, like chapters or individual stories. And perhaps that is the way it will eventually play out. But isolating stories isn't helping me get started right now because of the many angles from which those stories can be told. I feel like if I don't know the ultimate angle and theme of the book, I can't write the story so that it drives toward a meaningful end. It feels like relaying mere facts and movement and dialogue without any undercurrent of truth.

Kirk said he thinks my perfectionism is getting in the way of all this. That I seem afraid of letting things get messy. That maybe it takes a willingness to let myself freewrite without any knowledge of where things will go, trusting that eventually I will hit upon gold. Isn't that the way most authors work -- in darkness? Have I ever known an author to do otherwise? Can I maybe trust that the process itself is beautiful, that it's just as much about who I become along the way as it is about what finally gets written?

He would be right. I don't want a messy, unformed, confusing mass of process. I want to know the thing I'm about, to write it out completely, and then to send it off. Pronto, presto. And, no, I don't want to trust in a process that rests in obedient blindfulness. What if it doesn't turn out all right? What if I freewrite 300 pages of crap? I screwed my face up and shook my head, even crunched my body in half at the thought of writing badly for a really, really long time.

As we talked, though, some of his words stuck with me, and eventually they helped me to reopen my eyes and sit up again and ponder. First, there was the notion of messiness. Then there was the trust in a process. And then there was the beauty to be found in all that messy process.

All these words and notions seemed very familiar. And slowly, it came back to me. These are the same truths I learned through my first go-round with perfectionism, when God first began working at my heart's overhaul. These are the same deep-seated values I embraced on the other side of that long discovery, heartache, rebellion, and healing. They are the mercies I eventually bowed in gratefulness to receive, and they are the mercies I sought to offer with hope and understanding to others imprisoned by chains.

Haven't I learned that life is one big process of learning, healing, and growth that plays on repeat, the old issues just showing up in new places, every few years? Haven't I learned that my knee-jerk reaction to the unknown, to the fear of my failure, to the fear of my overwhelming inadequacy is to torque and tweak and harpoon my mind around until I've somehow mastered a thing and believe I cannot fail? Haven't I also learned that this is my attempt at the superhuman, at negating the truth of my humanity, at rejecting the reality of my existence, at turning my nose up at God's intention for me, proclaiming it just isn't good enough? And haven't I learned the utter mercy of allowing imperfection, the heart-searing beauty of a soul who does not know all things, the relief to be found when we allow ourselves as common equals, uncomprehending every nerve of existence, and the compassion we can offer and receive as great treasure as we shoulder together in this curious and ever-unfolding life?

I felt sad that I was in this place again, struggling with perfectionism and coping in just the same old way. But I knew enough of my previous experience of growing through it, remembered enough of the conviction I eventually held about the prize of this messy, disorganized process to be willing to step my toe into its waters once again. It will be hard, and I will have to keep remembering and choosing. I will catch myself back on dry land without knowing how or when I got back there, and I will have to willfully venture back to the shoreline, entering into the water again with only a belief in what I used to know. I will have to keep believing that what I learned before is more true than the feelings I feel about all this right now. And I will dare to hold onto a hope that this new spate of fumbling and blindness will also one day, too, serve its good purpose.

Heightened Sensibilities (Part 1)

Last Thursday, Kirk and I were looking for someplace to set down our bags and study. He had a midterm, and I had a paper. We wanted the freedom to get online. We needed to eat dinner. Usually we would head on down to Panera to fit this bill, but then Kirk suggested we try a new coffee shop we'd heard about through a classmate. Cup o' Soul, it's called. Free wi-fi. Coffee and sandwiches and soup. Owned by Christians, from the look of their logo (where the "l" is an upended ichthus).

"Ooooh," I said. "Wouldn't it be cool if we walked in and there were soft couches and dim lighting and it felt like . . . like . . . like a living room or den in someone's house?!"

"Go check out their website," Kirk said, with an air of mystery. (He'd already checked it.)

So I did. Here's what I found: "We saw a need for a place where people could meet, connect, and serve each other, and what better way to do that than in a living room environment, enjoying coffee house music and a great cup of soul straight from our kitchen." Cool, huh?

Even cooler is the actual place. As soon as we walked inside, it felt like we were stepping into someone's cozy home. Red comfy couches. Red cylindrical hanging lights. Mocha-colored walls. Abstract artwork on the walls in warm colors. A dark wood bookshelf that looks like an oversized stepladder leaning against the wall. Brown leather, art deco-looking stuffed chairs. Big windows that face the street. Trunk-sized coffee tables with trays of decorative stones on top. You know, good stuff, all.

And even better than all this were the people we met. Bob, the owner, introduced himself and stood talking with us for a good half-hour. We learned that he used to attend our church but now attends a church started by our pastor's son across town. When his wife came in a bit later, the four of us chatted in the main area about their vision for the shop and some of the challenges they've faced in these opening days.

Soon after we began studying, a young guy sitting across from us commented on our Mac covers (mine's green, Kirk's is red), which led into a conversation on film and art and faith. Jonathan shared some of his story with us, and also a few of his short films. (He does the film work for his church, which is the same church the owners attend.) When he showed us a short film he made of their recent baptism event at a local beach, just the looks of joy on the faces, along with the strong feeling of family projected forward from the film, made tears flow down my face. It felt like home. It felt so much like the spirit that surrounds my church back home, a spirit I've missed so much as I've been struggling to find a place I belong here. I felt an incredible ache deepen on my insides.

We left that evening in ultimate bliss, feeling like we'd just met family. And we had -- spiritual family, that is. As we drove away, Kirk and I first talked about our mutual desire to help this little coffeeshop succeed in the small ways we are able. For instance, Kirk scheduled a business meeting with a friend today in the small conference room at the back of the shop, instead of where they would usually meet down the street. I have plans to meet a friend for coffee there tomorrow night, and we've already been back to visit a couple more times ourselves.

But more than that, I hesitantly shared with Kirk that this visit to Cup o' Soul opened up a desire in me to give Summit Church a try, which is where the owners and most of the staff and customers attend. The church we now attend is wonderful in many ways, and it has been Kirk's home church for about fifteen years, so I wasn't sure he would feel the same way I did about trying something new. But Kirk understood my desire and suggested we try visiting after the first of the year.

I titled this post "heightened sensibilities" because this last week has provided a handful of experiences that have cracked my heart open in new ways, exposing desire and ache and longing for things that have long been there and things that are new. I look forward to sharing about these unique experiences in the posts to come over the next few days. Until next time, I'll leave off by saying that this first experience, the inaugural visit to Cup o' Soul, widened the gaping chasm in my heart that longs to be filled with community in this still-new home of mine. Hopefully it is just the beginning of something more yet to be filled.

Apprehending Reality

Sometimes I'm struck by how utterly brazen it is to say we believe in anything at all. I mean, how we do know what's real? Take Christianity, for example. Over the last few months, I've struggled off and on with my belief in this faith. I've been reading different chunks of the Scriptures regularly -- the Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Matthew, and now Acts and Mark -- and besides drawing me close to God and His heart in and for the world and for me, it has also raised for me many troubling questions. For example:

Why did Israel not recognize Jesus as the Christ, if they knew the Old Testament scriptures backward and forward? Where, if anywhere, do we get any advance indication that God planned for the Christ to come down here twice, not just once? Why does He often say nothing happens without His making it happen, and yet just as many times He seems surprised and dismayed at what Israel chooses to do? Why did God choose Israel in the first place, but then go back and forth in anger and love, regret and forgiveness, despair and embrace with her so often, only to eventually open His arms to all people the entire world over? Why does Jesus preach the teachings of the law so stridently sometimes when He not only came down here to fulfill it for us but also seemed at other times to eliminate it altogether? And finally, why does Peter not figure more prominently than Paul in the New Testament letters, when Peter was the one upon whom Christ said He would build the church?

For a few weeks, I struggled hard with these quesitons. I teetered on the brink of despair. I wondered if Jesus was a fraud. I thought about Judaism, about other religions, about no religion at all.

Eventually, through the help of Kirk and my friend Sara, I settled into my questions and decided I was okay with having them. If what I believe through the faith of Christianity is true, God knows what He is doing in this whole big landscape of our questions and has folded all of reality into His infinite understanding, which He may or may not choose to share with me -- with any of us -- ever.

In that place about two months ago, it came down to one ultimate question for me: Does what I believe make more sense than anything else I could choose to believe? Because, ultimately, we have to put our trust in something. If I chose not to believe in Christianity, what would I replace that with? And how would I know that new belief was true, and more true than Christianity?

Eventually I decided that Christianity made the most fundamental sense of reality that I could understand at this time. It made the most sense intellectually, and it made sense at an even deeper level of knowing, beyond my mind's grasp. So I kept going.

My freaked-out-ness diminished. I kept living some more. I went on for another month or so just doing my thing. And then, as I'm wont to do regularly out of habit and fear, I started veering toward life in my own strength. I faced yet another course correction along that historic line. I had more conversations with God about the vocational trajectory of my life. He talked to me, and I talked back. We danced together a few more days.

And yet, for reasons I may explain in a future post, I reached a point over this past weekend where I was questioning His realness again. Not in the same theologically mind-bending way as before, but in a profound, deep place inside my heart. (That's not to say that the earlier theological questions hadn't penetrated me at a deep soul level; they had. It's just that this next time around, it got even more personal.)

We were staying at Kirk's mom's house for the holiday weekend, ten hours up I-75 in Georgia, sleeping in a tiny attic room with a square skylight that looked high up to the sky. Having evaded God in prayer for a number of days, one night I found myself sitting straight up in bed in the dark, long after Kirk had fallen asleep, talking at God feverishly out loud and spilling out all the reasons I didn't even realize I had been avoiding Him all those days and every single thing I feared inside that moment.

Like I said, maybe I will talk more about what led me up to that point sometime soon. For now, I will just say that I ended that prayer with one final, bold request: that He would somehow prove that He was real to me. I felt sheepish making this prayer, as I didn't like the way it sounded, me asking the God of the universe to prove Himself to me. But then I kept thinking that He says He wants my heart, the truth of who I am in total, a real and true relationship with intimacy and honesty, and in that place, all I truly wanted was to know that He is real.

Having made my peace by speaking all that was in my heart out loud with Him directly, I lay back down on the bed, my head sinking into the fluffy feather pillow, the stacks of thick down comforters and flannel sheets hemming me in warm and tight on all sides, and I fell fast asleep.

As I slept, I dreamed. I dreamed that a group of young men were following me, trailing me like a gang of men up to no good. I tried to escape them by ducking into a busy Barnes & Noble bookstore, but they folowed me inside, all the way to the back, where I fearfully slipped into the women's restroom.

I hid inside a stall with the door closed, yet somehow I could see through a one-way window into the men's bathroom, where the youngest of the three men had gone to wait me out. He didn't know I could see him, and he couldn't see me, and so I sat there watching him watch the door for me to come out. (Of course, this being a dream, he somehow had the ability, inside the men's restroom, to know if I had left the room next door.)

My fear increased, even though I was temporarily safe. I didn't know what to do. I felt trapped, Then, just before I was going to break through the door and make a run for it, another man entered the men's restroom. He was wearing a furry woolen hat cropped close on his head, and he entered a stall nearer the transparent glass to me. He had effectually put himself between me and my intended assaulter.

I knew in a flash it was Him. It was Jesus, come to rescue me. He came into that forlorn and dangerous place to save me, and I knew it. Without ever having seen His face, without ever having locked my eyes with His, without ever having heard a single word fall from His lips, I knew it was Him. He was as real as the heavy laminate stall door I was pressed up against. He was as real as the turtleneck sweater hugging my neck. He was as real as the air.

I never saw how the dream ended, but it didn't matter. When I woke up, I could think only one thought, over and over again, all morning long: He is real, and I know Him.

Take Me Back Into Memory

For those of you who followed along in my (very long!) post a couple days ago about my spiritual wanderings and how they eventually landed me in new territory with my business and my writing in the last two weeks, you know that, in the end, I agreed to embark upon a journey into a long-time-coming book. You also know that the writing of this book will be a journey I can't take alone; somehow, I will be getting it written and eventually finished with God's help.

This is a good thing, as shortly after committing myself to this process, I realized that I'm about to write about a ten-year period of my life for which I have no record. Meaning, journals. I've kept journals my whole life, with a diary or a bound journal or even a spiral-bound writing notebook always nearby, on my nightstand or in my purse, in order to record my days, my private thoughts, or my prayers . . . except not for this ten-year period, at least not in any substantial form.

I very clearly remember the first few days of my shift into this journey I'm supposed to now write about -- the first few days of realizing my spiritual life, and therefore the future trajectory of my life in total, was about to change. When this realization hit me, I stopped journalling on purpose, and I did this for two reasons. First, because what was happening was so massive that I couldn't begin to try putting it into words, even for myself, even for a sustaining prayer. And second, because a large part of what was being accomplished in me through that shift had to do with doing less, in order to learn how to just be. Part of doing less included a full-stop on words. (I've shared a bit about this full-stop period here.)

So, no words. Just one very long season of growth and paying attention, only without writing anything down. Very weird, and very hard. Especially now, as I sit staring at a computer screen, hoping to write a book about what happened in that whole length of time and why it even happened in the first place.

Day 3 of this venture found me starting a new Word document. I titled it "One Girl's Drum," just a working title for now, as I need something to call it through this writing period and also need to make it more real by giving it a real name. I put a header on the document that includes the title, the page number, and my name.

And then I sat there. And sat there. You writers know what I'm talking about. Besides not now writing for instant publication (meaning, for this blog space, which always gets the creativity flowing without a problem, ever), I was also having to learn a new method to my madness: writing in conjunction with the Supreme Being of the Universe. No pressure there, of course.

After sitting for about five minutes, I gave up and shuffled off to bed. I crawled into bed, discouraged, and let Kirk wrap his arms around me. I told him I had no idea how this was going to happen or how it would work. He reminded me of a line from a combination of verses I claimed for myself a couple of years ago: "I am the Lord's handmaiden, created to will and work according to His good pleasure."

When he reminded me of this part about being the Lord's handmaiden, it was then easier for me to go to God in prayer. I found myself sitting at His feet, and He was seated on His throne. I was wearing a cream linen peasant dress, and my hair was long around me. I stared up at Him and adored His face. And eventually, I spoke.

"I'm scared," I told Him. "And I need Your help. This all just seems so big, everything You've done, and I don't remember all of it. Will You help me through this?"

He smiled at me, His eyes so full of the love they always hold. My mind went back to those initial days of the journey, which are so familiar to me and which therefore I know will be hard to capture fittingly in words. My mind then moved to a couple random moments in time, until it landed upon a very specific memory I had forgotten about. A key moment. A closely cherished one.

"Oh," I breathed. "I had forgotten about that." I sat with the memory for a moment, remembering its specialness to me, its specialness to me and Jesus. I offered up thanks that it had happened. And I realized what had just taken place: we had begun working together. He was giving me a place to start. "Okay, I can do that," I said. "I will start there."

The next morning, I got up and sat with the memory again, trying to go back into it. I could recall only bits and snatches. This surprised me, given how profoundly moving a moment it had been, how crucial it was to the foundation, how I'd even shared it with a few different close friends since then. You would think the telling of it would have branded it into my memory that much further.

This is the point at which I realized I had no records from that period of my life. This realization scared me, and I knew that I needed God again, so I opened my Bible. Mine is an ESV Journaling Bible, meaning it has ruled lines along the outside edges of the pages for you to journal your thoughts and notes as you read. I am reading my way through the psalms and journaling prayers in the margin after each day's reading, so I opened up to the next psalm. I read it aloud a couple of times and then plunged directly into the prayer bubbling up in my heart:

We are on this journey together, are we not, Lord? I really got a sense of that last night when I was scared of stepping out into this unknown land of writing a book. I really felt I could come to You, could tell You I was scared and that I wanted to run to other comforts that are not the true Comfort: You.

Kirk was good to remind me that I am the LORD's handmaiden, and so I sat at Your feet, just worshipping and adoring You. I felt so vulnerable in that place, all my controls over life slipping away, yet in that slipping still indicating they are there.

We sat together in that place, and we communicated with few words. You reminded me of that time You met me in the wood by the river in the mountains, how we sat togther in safety, how that was my first time ever imagining myself with You in my mind, in an image.

Please remind me, Jesus, what was spoken in that place between us and how it formed that moment of my journey. It was pivotal, I know, and yet I do not remember the particulars. Remember that I had stopped journalling? This is where my memory fails me and makes me afraid to write. Do I have any true memories left? Can You teach me about my memories as we write these chapters together? I'm so scared because this means that it is so much more out of my control. Help me, Father, in the way You want me helped. Amen.

So this, now, is my prayer: that He would take me back into memory, restore to me the images and words that made up all the important days that have preceded my coming to this moment, the specifics of the times I can't remember. I've never asked God to restore to me my memory before. This is wholly new, and this is where I do know now, for sure, that we indeed are writing this book, Him and me, together.

Here I Stand

On Sunday night, Kirk and I lay down to sleep through the merciful release of prayer. We had come to that moment through a lot of internal striving in the previous week about Big Things, mostly circling around career and calling. Many good options lay in front of us, but which are the best ones? Which have we been holding onto because of our own designs and desires, rather than the design and desire of God? And within His plans, how do we keep ourselves from clutching too hard, from running too quickly in the wrong direction once He shares His intention with us? What, truly, does it mean to live in Him, through Him, and for Him?

Last week I wrote about fleeing Christ, and I opened that post with a stanza from a hymn we sang in corporate worship. I had come to that church service exhausted and discouraged. The discouraged part came from having received the first four responses to my survey for SC (which is shorthand-speak for the name of my business), and these four responses provided somewhat unfavorable data on the whole. This naturally led me into a downward spiral of questioning myself and what I am doing and whether it's something other people want or even need. (Though Kirk was good to remind me that four responses do not quite make up a representative sample of the whole.)

The exhausted part came through all the spinning and churning and twirling that my mind had been caught up in for so long over SC, trying to make each step that I took be exactly right and trying to understand every parameter it could possibly touch. My mind was exhausted from so much spinning and churning and twirling, and yet I didn't know how to get myself out of it.

When I talk about fleeing Christ, then, it shows up so glaringly in this place: when I run from Him to the power of my own mind, trying to contain all the power and wisdom that will make my life work and cause it to make some semblance of sense. And which ultimately leads to the utter ruin and exhaustion of my spirit. And which, really, is where I spend most of my time.

Thankfully, God was gracious enough to let me see that this had become the pattern of my recent days. He nudged me, asking if this was where I'd stand, if this was where I would root myself forever. I shrugged my shoulders at Him, my head hanging down, so tired but acknowledging that I heard Him and that He must know a better way because He is God, after all, yet knowing myself utterly incompetent to learn what that way was, much less how to get myself there. Gently, He disclosed to me the words of the next stanza:

I will not boast in anything,

No gifts, no power, no wisdom.

But I will boast in Jesus Christ,

His death and resurrection.

As I lifted my voice to sing these words, I knew there was something to them. Something important that I couldn't quite grasp. Something beyond the width and length and breadth of my own mind's landscape. It was, literally, out of my mind.

Yet I further confess that I don't always know what these words mean, to boast only in Christ's death and resurrection. Sometimes this notion strikes me as ethereal and ultimately paralyzing, since you can't really live rooted in that one place. If you spent all your time boasting about Christ, how would you get anything done? How would you actually live life? And isn't it our gifts, our power to act, and our wisdom to make decisions that get us through each day as living beings? And didn't God give us those gifts, that power, and what wisdom we do have, anyway?

Despite my incomprehension of this truth, I took it into myself and made it my prayer. Lord, help me to learn what it means to boast only in Jesus Christ. I wasn't sure if God would answer this prayer, and I really had no idea how He would answer it, if He did. But I kept asking, and on went the rest of the week. I continued to receive survey upon survey, with your generosity and the power of word of mouth spreading it like wildfire, and yet as more and more surveys came back, the greater grew my conviction that something in there was wrong.

Here is where I will confess two things. First, that my marvel at the beauty of the human spirit, and particularly the feminine spirit, runs so deep that I have been pursuing how to make SC all things for all people, even transcending religious boundaries, upon the conviction that helping any woman get more in touch with her true heart, no matter her current, previous, or future walk of life and no matter her religion or core beliefs, still helps her get closer to God. If we believe Him when He says He cares most about the heart and that it is through the heart that we spill open the wellspring of life, then getting closer to the truth of our hearts ultimately gets us -- all of us -- closer to Him, and I have wanted to be a part of helping that happen. I trusted that He could take care of the rest, meaning all the religious particulars that would unfold from that point forward, because He's just that big and sovereign enough to handle it.

My second confession is that I have gotten quite far in developing SC without having any real knowledge of the content, the actual questions each woman will sit with that will help her spill open that wellspring of life in the first place. This has been a challenge for me, especially in the way I need to use language to communicate with other people about what SC is about. Usually I end up saying something like, "It's about helping women understand their lives, where they have been and where they are going, in light of how they were uniquely created to live." Except that doesn't really get at the heart of it, isn't anywhere close to what I mean it to be, and usually just winds up making people think it's about finding one's purpose in life, particularly in relation to work.

What's really quirky to me about this whole situation is how clear I am on everything else: the context, the format, and even the look and feel of the actual product. I know how all these elements will work together to help facilitate the SC experience and what SC is about, except I still hadn't been able to quite articulate what SC was about.

This all came to a head through the SC survey. In creating it, I had to settle upon a language around which to base all the questions. Because I was still attempting to make the audience as open and far-reaching as possible, this made it challenging. (This is also no doubt why articulating, even to myself, what SC is about had become quite the challenge.) So I elected to use more general terms for the base of the questions: "self-awareness" and "personal reflection."

Yes, self-awareness is one of the SC values, and yes, personal reflection is an integral part of the discovery process a woman will go through . . . but, really, those phrases do not fully incarnate the heart of it all, likely because they're so firmly rooted in the self. There's no transcendence there. And the more the surveys went out and came back in, the more I could feel in my gut that this was a problem. SC is not meant to be earthbound, I was slowly coming to see and embrace. But what, in fact, was SC meant to be?

Remember that all of this was taking place last week, after I had prayed that prayer of release in church, the prayer that asked God to teach me how to boast in Jesus, not myself. And remember that the beginning of this post started by saying that it was this past Sunday night, about a week after that hymn prayer, that Kirk and I fell into bed in prayer, asking God to help us let go of the parts of our lives we were directing ourselves in favor of letting them truly be directed by God.

One of the things I let go of on Sunday night was SC. Confessing that I have no idea what this is supposed to be about, and knowing that He was the one who had called me to do it in the first place, I told Him that I was handing it over and would just stand before Him and wait. I would wait to receive it back from Him, if indeed He wanted to give it back, and I would listen closely for His voice, not my own, telling me what it should be.

Remember, too, that Sunday was the day I had that pivotal and paradigm-altering conversation with my bro-ham Bobby, much of which circled around my desire to write. So that night, when Kirk and I fell into prayer, I did the same thing with my written words. I gave them back to God. I told him, Here, you can have them. As much as I want to do this, and as much as I think I probably can, you meant my words for Yourself when You gave them to me. If you want to do something more with them, then give them back to me Yourself. I will stand here and wait. I will listen, also, to what stories You want those words to tell.

That night, I tossed and turned fitfully, drifting in and out of sleep and never fully falling into dreamland until 4:30 in the morning. (This is probably due to my drinking three mugfuls of hot black tea right before going to bed!) But in the middle of all that fitfulness, I heard a voice that was wholly other in a still, small place.

Soul care.

I went wide awake and listened closely, and then I heard it again.

Soul care.

"Soul care," I said aloud, acknowledging I had heard it. Of course. That's exactly what SC is about. That's what it's been about all along, just without my knowing it. It's so completely true and at the heart of it. I can't believe I never noticed that. (And no, "SC" as a name had no previous relation to the term "soul care" at all; it's a combination of two wholly other words.)

And now, for me to consider SC in light of soul care, I'm aware how far I have to go. How much I have to learn. How much I still don't know. I'm still keeping this a matter of prayer, asking God if that was indeed His voice that I heard in that silent night, still standing before Him and waiting, but preparing myself for an even longer haul that may include another degree here or here. And, of course, this also answers the question of religion: SC truly is meant for Christian believers alone, helping facilitate the soul's movement up toward God.

Later the next day, as I washed the dishes after dinner, I stood there praying with God about the other concern: my writing. I'm still standing here, God, I affirmed to Him again, waiting for what You will reveal. And as I stood there sudsing up the glasses, washing them clean under all that hot water and then standing them up to dry on the dish towel on the counter, I heard Him talk back to me:

Why not share what I've been up to? Why not share about this whole long journey I've been taking you on for the past ten years, all with an aim to more fully capturing your whole heart? Why not talk about you and Me together?

Hm. This is certainly something I had considered before, but had always discounted it for a later time because it all still seems so fuzzy. To be truthful, writing this blog for the past year and a half has been quite instructive in teaching me my method of writing. When I hit upon something important that needs to be said, things usually stew around on the inside for a couple days without any words until -- suddenly, as if hit with a beam of light -- it all becomes clear in an instant. I see the post unravel itself from beginning to end, telling me how the story most wants to be told, and then I sit down to write it. These more significant and weighty posts take a long time to write, sometimes a couple of hours (this one has taken seven hours so far . . . ), but I've learned from this blogging experience how I work: I incubate, then I see it in a flash, and then I compose it line by line, sentence by sentence, one paragraph at a time.

I suppose through this blog experience, then, I've assumed that the writing of a book would happen in the same way. Every writer on the planet has a different way of doing things, and this must be my way. And since it is such a much larger project, I figured the stewing process would just take a much longer time, which is why I hadn't sat down with any flash of inspiration for a book idea these days. It's all still just incubating around in there, I thought.

Monday night, however, I got a different sense about all this. Perhaps the writing of my spiritual journey is a journey in and of itself, something God wants the two of us to embark upon together. Perhaps the mystery of the process is intentional because it grows my active dependence on Him. And perhaps that dependence is part of the point. Perhaps that dependence is, really, what it means to boast in Christ.

Meeting Lauren Winner

Lauren Winner came to RTS Orlando yesterday to speak about her book Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity. (This is the same seminary Kirk and I happened to visit last week, which we decided was excellent timing on our part, as we hadn't visited the campus in quite some time and only happened to learn of her visit when we stopped to purchase some books at the bookstore!)

I first came to know Lauren Winner as most people did: about five years ago, with the release of her first book, the spiritual memoir Girl Meets God. I love this book for so many reasons, some of which include her honesty, her love for books and learning, her facile use of language, her transparency about her foibles as a young twentysomething, her deep exploration of spiritual territory, and, of course, how she translates a greater fullness to our faith through the medium of our Jewish heritage. I particularly love that this integration is delivered through the story of her own personal journey into Judaism, out of Judaism into Jesus, and her consequent struggle to understand Christianity in light of the Jewish faith.

It had been some time since I'd read Real Sex, having skimmed the entire book while taking a leisurely afternoon at the local Barnes & Noble Cafe back home a couple years ago, so I looked forward to a refresher talk on her perspective about sex, chastity, and our relationship to our bodies within Christianity.

More than that, though, I just looked forward to hearing her speak -- seeing how her personality on the page translates into real life, given the ideas you tend to gather about a person as you hear them share about themselves inside a book.

To the extent that you can gain real glimpses of a person through a one-hour lecture and a book signing, I will say that Lauren Winner appears to be one of the most articulate, thoughtful, intelligent, studied, feisty, yet down-to-earth 31-year-olds I have ever met. My respect for her increased by the minute as she shared with great candor about how she came to write the book and with even greater candor about what she would do differently if she could write the book all over again. I was particularly moved by her genuine grief that the book does not include any discussion about sexual violence, which she shared was a complete and grievous oversight. I also loved hearing her riff extensively on the many subjects that were raised as she fielded questions from the audience.

I could have listened to her talk all day long.

All of this would have been thrilling enough, but then I got to meet her. I confess I was nervous. Wouldn't you be nervous, too, if you got a few minutes of face-time with an author who has influenced you tremendously and with whom you feel a one-sided kinship when you read their books? I hemmed and hawed in my head about what to say. Should I say her book changed my life? Should I confess that I wrote and mailed her a letter back when I finished Girl Meets God for the first time? Should I dare ask to take a picture? Should I just let her sign the book and move on?

Thankfully, I was fifth in line, so I got to watch what other people did and then how she responded. Yes, she was gracious about taking pictures. Yes, she would listen to what individuals wanted to share. Yes, she would respond to new questions, and even extensively, settling back into her seat and gesticulating with her hands as she gained momentum in thinking about a new idea. She was adorable.

So, I braved it all. I told her that Girl Meets God changed my world, that along with Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott it was the first book to help me settle more into my own skin as a writer sharing about my spiritual journey. I told her about that letter I had written many years ago, how I had sent it care of her publisher without knowing if they would even forward it on to her, and how I had been compelled to write it because her book had raised so many thoughts and feelings in me about questions I'd already been asking myself about pursuing an academic path. This last part caught her interest, so we talked for a few moments about it.

And then to top it off, when she agreed to take a picture, she noticed my purse. It's a small vinyl magazine bag with classic leather books printed all over it. I get so many comments about this purse, and people are amazed when I tell them Kirk found it for me at Borders for something like ten bucks. But a comment on this purse from Lauren Winner? Nothing quite like it.

Here's Lauren, listening to me regale her with stories about my life. As you can see, she is a most gracious and present listener.

This is me, just plain happy to be sharing a moment with the amazing Lauren Winner.

Fleeing Christ

Behold the Man upon a cross,

My sin upon His shoulders.

Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice

Call out among the scoffers.

Two years ago on Easter weekend, I participated in what has become a yearly observance at my home church in California: a day of mourning on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the day when the disciples had no idea what the heck had just happened and no notion of what lay ahead in the days (and centuries) to come. All they knew was what they had seen: the One they had followed was gone. All they had staked their life upon had, quite literally, expired.

On that Saturday, my home church clears out all the seats in the sanctuary so it is simply a vast, open space lit only by candles. Six stations are available for you to move through at your own pace. On this day of mournful identification with the disciples in their grief, the first place you stop is a remembrance station. Here, you take a colored stone from a vase, sit with it in your hand as you contemplate Christ and what His life has meant to you, and then cast the stone into a bowl of water. The second station is a confession booth, where elders and pastors receive your words of contrition and offer the liberation of absolution. Yet another station provides a table covered in mural paper, as well as crayons; you draw what your words cannot express. The final station is a large wooden cross draped in red cloth, planted center stage, where you grieve the loss of Christ and the terrible crucifixion He endured.

I know it's a strange time to be talking about Easter, it being November and all, but as I sang the words to the hymn quoted above at church last night, I was reminded of one particular station I visited on that Saturday two years ago, the sin that was revealed to me in that place, and how closely I still abide it.

At the particular station I'm talking about, we were asked to put ourselves into the shoes of one of the followers of Jesus, encouraged to really try to capture the thoughts, feelings, doubts, regrets, and grief they may have been carrying around in their hearts on "the day after." We were to write those impressions on one side of a piece of paper, then turn the paper over to journal our response and reflections on that experience, speaking to how it became personal.

I chose Peter. The one who loved Jesus fiercely but ran away in the eleventh hour. The one who correctly called Jesus the Christ but then denied having had anything to do with Him when push came to shove. As I sat there on the floor that Saturday two years ago, surrounded by candles and scraps of paper and pencil nibs, as well as a handful of other believers exploring that same space, I realized that I dwell not so far from Peter's folly. I, too, campaign with zeal for Christ when I am near Him. And yet, how quickly I flee from before Him, how immediately I mock Him, if not with words then with actions or inaction.

I have more specifics to share about this, more to say about how fleeing Christ currently shows up in my life and how He's inviting me deeper than my fear. For now I will simply say that He is patient and He is loving and He is kind and He is wondrous, and all of this so graciously so. Praise God, truly, for that.

Disconnected from My Heart

Pre-note: You'll want to tuck in for this one, 'cause it's gonna be long. The words for this post have been forming in an ever-growing, wordless orb for some time now, and it took sleeplessness tonight to help me see what those words were in order to bring them to the light. I hope you're able to find my deep heart somewhere in these words, and that you're still here with me at the end of this long story.

Before I was single in my twenties, I was married. I've shared tiny mentions of this here and there in the history of this blog, but not many details. I'm not going to share many details about it here, either, except to say that it wasn't until I was single in my twenties that I got to explore what it really meant to be a girl. It wasn't until I was doing my own thing, learning my own path, that I started truly nurturing and tending to the soft and feminine places inside my spirit. And it felt so wonderful once I did.

I remember shopping -- really shopping -- for myself in that place for the very first time. It was April 2005. I had been single for a year and a half, and I had just quit my job at a local non-profit without the promise of a new job lined up, even though it seemed like a pretty done deal that I'd be going back to teach at the college honors program. Still, there was about a week's worth of time between my leaving the old job and finding out that I'd gotten the new one. But even without that certainty nailed down, I had a peacefulness inside me that said it would be okay to move forward, away from the non-profit, without anything else in store. It was that feminine heart in me, learning to trust in God's deeply personal love for me. And then, of course, He proved that I could indeed trust Him, because the job came through.

So, back to the shopping story. When I got news of the job, I decided it was time for new adornment. I had looked into my closet and found all kinds of professional clothing -- in blacks, greys, and tans. No color! And I realized for the first time that I'd never really kept vibrant colors in my wardrobe before. When I turned my mind back to working at the college, this time as a single girl learning to make her own way in the world, I knew that I wanted to do it in color. And I wanted to do it with my own brand of femininity.

Off I went to the mall by myself. What I bought was truly lovely. There were pastels in pinks, creams, purples, light blues, and turquoise. There were girlie-colored corduroy pants and a dashing pair of sapphire pants that tied with a cream-and-sapphire sash. There were all sorts of fabrics and styles, from sheer material and velvet to baby-doll eyelet and lace piping. There was even a pair of pink velvet pants! (My personal favorite.)

It was heavenly. Eventually I found shoes to match the styles -- a pair in light brown with pink stitching and a cute bow, a cream pair to match my corduroys, some summer sandals with thin white straps and a burst of turquoise and maroon and fuschia flowers mashed together, a pair of brown peasant shoes, and more -- and gave myself permission to splurge for another shopping excursion just two months later.

It was the first time I'd ever treated myself to such luxury, and I felt like a feminine queen every single day of that year. Somehow, when I made the move to do this, it felt very important that I was doing it. And when I shared about it with Kirk (he and I had just begun corresponding via e-mail a few weeks prior, still in the very early stages of our relationship), I so appreciated his response back to me in that moment: "God is lavishing His love on you in this place. You are reclaiming your feminine heart."

And it's true. I was. I was remembering that I was a girl, and that God had made me beautiful. This is what He had been teaching me in deep places all through the major season of my healing from the divorce, in the quiet corners of my home and the new spaces I was learning to inhabit in the world. For me, all of this experience with the clothes was tacked on top, having so much to do with showing on the outside everything that was healing and being transformed in me on the inside. I was connecting with my feminine heart for the first time in forever, and I wanted that to show up in the way I adorned myself. I wanted to feel the adornment of loveliness all over me. And I did, for that entire year.

Proof of pink velvet pants.

The other thing that happened in that year is that I connected more deeply with my free and creative spirit, and ultimately my writer's heart. I traded in a future life of academia for a life of expansiveness and expressiveness and freedom. My heart was truly being set free.

Fast forward one year from that first shopping experience, and you will find me preparing to leave California to make a new life in Florida with Kirk. In this memory, I've been engaged three months, and our wedding is in about two weeks. I'm purging my little guesthouse studio of everything that will not fit in the back of my Volkswagen Jetta or the ten cardboard boxes I am shipping across the country.

With my life on overdrive to close out a job, a life, and a single girl's home for a cross-country move, an overseas wedding, and a new life with my sweet, I've gained about ten pounds. The velvet pink pants no longer hang loose and fashionable on my form. The cream corduroy pants feel a bit tight, as do the purple ones. The sheer, layered, multicolored blouse that matches my sapphire pants seems worn, having lost its luster over the course of many wearings this past year.

So I pack all my feminine adornments in a box that I donate to a girl going on a mission trip, a girl raising money through a weekend garage sale that's happening in two days. I give her all my beautiful things, knowing I will never see them again once she drives away. (I still cannot believe I did this.)

Fast-forward another month and you will find me home from our honeymoon and another five pounds heavier. (Europe for a celebratory three weeks will do that to you!) The clothes I did bring with me to Florida no longer fit so well, either, and they are nowhere near the prettiness factor I had going on before. This is not how I wanted to start my life as Kirk's new wife. This, I'm thinking, is when I should be feeling at the height of my femininity. But I wasn't. And when I went to work for the publisher soon after that, I spent $500 on black and grey and brown suits instead of flowy pink and purple and textured things. I've already shared in a previous post my issues with body image. And now that I'm no longer working today, I feel shopping for girlie clothes is a luxury I just cannot afford to indulge.

I miss my feminine self.

On top of that, I miss my creative self. You may or may not remember that I went through a quiet wordlessness for a couple weeks recently. I didn't understand what it was about for a while, but it has all slowly begun to come together. Let me share more about that now.

During that couple-weeks period, I was delving deeper into some beautiful and amazing new blogs I'd discovered through a series of connections. Each new discovery led to yet another, and soon I had a good list going of women whose hearts and talents and creativity and spirits I immediately recognized and came to love, even though I'd never met them nor worked up the courage to say hi and introduce myself.

One girl in particular arrested my attention in this process, and I spent a couple afternoons combing through her entire blog archive, thirsty to keep reading her story and watching her transformation from social worker to full-time artist unfold with each new page-click.

Here is what I think happened through all that. I think that discovering these lovely new ladies, and especially traversing the deep landscape of one particular girl's release into full creativity, ignited something in me that had long been dormant, and that is my own creative and feminine heart. My writing heart. My girlie heart. The one I had discovered and nurtured into being during that season of singleness. The one I now realized I had left back home in California in so many ways, with all of the touchpoints that reminded me through my daily routine who I was and who I was becoming each new day.

Kirk and I have shared numerous conversations in the past few weeks about all this as I've been walking through it and trying to make sense of it, and those conversations have been full of tears and revelations and laughter and sadness and hope. I'm able to look back over this year and see how many times I have chosen, in fear, to rely on my own strength and resources as the source of my life and hope, instead of the promises and proofs of God's provision or the strength that Kirk has to offer. As has so often been the story of my life, I've gone self-reliant, and in the consequence have slowly closed off my heart to many things . . . especially to its longing to run free and explore and trust and laugh and smile and dream.

In the past couple days, it seems God is trying to get even more personal with me. (What, He hasn't gotten personal enough already?!) In all kinds of places, I keep bumping up against this question: "Will I let God romance me?" I'm sitting here, every time I hear the question, and I'm thinking, "That requires trust and vulnerability." In all honesty, I'm not sure I'm ready to give that to Him. But I can see that He's persisting. He keeps asking the question. He keeps meeting me in places where I begin to let my mind wander into what that might look like, how that might feel, how it could maybe happen, for me to trust and be free and let Him romance me at an even deeper level than He has before. I'm sad to say that I keep evading Him within about two minutes of pondering the question every time.

But here I am, at 3:00 in the morning, writing it all down. Getting back in touch with my heart. Sharing it with you. Perhaps you will pray for me.

Post-note: If you want to visit any of the lovely new blogs I've found that I mentioned above, you're more than welcome to join me in lurking! I'm working up the courage to say hello. Anyday now, I'm sure it will happen. Maybe that day will be today! But in the meantime, here are the links for you to enjoy right along with me . . .

Boho Girl

Kelly Rae

Self Taught Girl

Andrea Superhero

Dancing Mermaid

Learning to Say No

I remember a time in junior high when I found myself committed to something every night of the week: Bible study on Monday nights, drama practice on Tuesday nights, youth group on Wednesday nights, piano and voice lessons on Thursday afternoons, and regular youth social functions on Friday nights. Add homework, discipleship group meetings, regular church attendance on Sundays, and quality time with family and friends to that mix, and my thirteen-year-old body was about to drop dead from exhaustion!

The thing was, these things had crept into my life so quietly, so subtly, and so . . . naturally. I had signed on to them because they seemed a part of who I was, or who I imagined myself to be. When my mom expressed concern and gently suggested I tone down my involvement in so many things, it was hard to agree with her that this needed to happen. Eventually, I agreed to drop the drama group.

This is a tame version of my inability to say no.

Less tame are the compromising situations I faced in my dating life while growing up. Or the early marriage I stepped into after calling it off for three months. Or the tacit acquiescence to values not my own in group settings. The more I say yes, or choose to say nothing, when my gut says I should speak up or walk away, the more I feel my dignity, my self-respect, and my basic sense of self slip through my fingers.

Now I find myself in a season where flexing the "no" muscle is being required with greater regularity. For example:

* I was invited last month to act as the public relations liaison for a new film society on campus. I said yes immediately, being excited by the prospect, but then felt the discordant strum in my gut that said it was a distraction. I tried to back out the next day, but then ended up agreeing to come for the first few meetings on a trial basis. I finally told the president -- just today -- that I need to withdraw my involvement.

* Additionally, I volunteered myself a couple weeks ago as the key actor in a film shoot for the first installment of the film society's ad campaign. As the shoot date dawned upon us, it slowly occurred to me and Kirk that I had signed up for 1) a chase scene 2) at night 3) in a wooded area 4) when I had no health insurance to speak of. My "can't say no" self died at the thought of backing out at the last minute, but my more rational self said it was a risk too steep to be worth it for a small student club film shoot with no official campus oversight. I called the director with the bad news that I couldn't make it. Thankfully, he was gracious and another student filled right in. (I also got my health insurance worked out the next day.)

* A classmate of mine who wants to go into screenwriting also has been working on a fantasy/sci-fi novel for the past handful of years. When he learned that I'm a writer and have also worked in publishing, he asked if I'd be willing to discuss his stories with him. I said yes, since that sort of thing interests me and I enjoy helping people, but then realized later that I don't actually have the time outside of class to give to something like this. I had to tell him -- again, today -- that I can't commit to this after all.

The thing that bothers me about each of these situations is that a lot of trouble could have been saved if I'd just thought it through ahead of time and said no at the beginning. Instead, I gave my commitment and then backed out later. This not only diminishes the strength of my word in the eyes of others but also leaves them in the lurch. Facing this reality three times in a row in the space of one week has been a powerful way to learn that I want my yes to be yes and my no to be no. It's hard work! But I'm glad to be getting the practice, and following through on my gut instinct eventually, even if not immediately.

* Post-note: I should also add the additionally embarrassing fact that the key person I had to break my commitment to in each of the three stories above was the exact same person each time. Talk about humiliating and really feeling like your word means nothing to someone anymore. Argh!

Jehovah Jireh

So, about three weeks ago I started praying a quirky little prayer. God, please help us finish furnishing this cute little house in more creative ways than we can imagine.

I started praying this prayer because I began to see that our current financial situation was not going to get the house furnished any time soon. This had been okay for the past three months, when we could still legitimately say we had just moved in and were getting used to our new school programs, but now we were getting to the point of wanting to settle in, truly. When people came to visit, we wanted to offer them more than a hard chair to sit upon at the dining room table. When we finished doing laundry, we wanted to store our clothes in something other than plastic boxes on the floor. And when I start the focus groups here in our home in the coming month, I want the girls involved in the groups to feel safe and welcomed into a comfy space that feels homey and secure.

So I decided to start praying the faith prayer. I was prompted to do this because I kept remembering the story of a lady I met a few years ago who had gone through a horrific divorce about twenty years prior and suddenly found herself living alone in an empty house with pretty much no possessions to speak of. (Thank goodness our situation hasn't been anywhere near as drastic as hers.) In that devastating place, she told God she was relying on Him to give her everything she needed, both emotionally and physically. And then she came home from work the next day to discover a ton of good furniture had been left on the front curb of her property. She had no idea where it came from, and still to this day does not know.

What can I say? I felt inspired to branch out and humbly request for God to provide for our needs, too. On the same day I prayed that prayer for the very first time, I even got up out of my seat at the dining room table and opened the front door to see if God had prompted someone to drop a couch at our curb in the few minutes it took me to articulate the prayer . . . or perhaps decided to miraculously drop one out of the sky Himself, just because He can.

He hadn't.

It took me a few days to let Kirk in on this new approach to our situation, since I felt kind of silly for praying it in the first place, and especially silly for getting out of my seat to check on it right afterward. But eventually, of course, I told him, and then every few days after that I would give him an update.

"Um, sweetheart?" I would call into the other room from where I stood at the front door or the window.

"Yeah, hon," Kirk would call back, having no idea what I was up to.

"I just want you to know that there is no couch sitting at the edge of our curb."

To which he would laugh, and I would laugh, and then I'd go into the other room and shrug my shoulders. "It could happen," I'd say. And he would say, "I know it can. And I love you for your faith."

This whole time, I knew God would work it out, even though I also knew it could take a really long time. Like, maybe His creative way of helping us would be to help us find a way to set aside some extra money from the budget every month until we saved enough to buy some items. That could take a long time, and it really didn't seem feasible, given the constraints of our budget, but it could happen.

Thankfully, that's not what happened. What happened really was a creative surprise, just like I had prayed it would be.

For one, my mom came into town last week and told us she wanted to buy us a housewarming gift. She said she'd been planning it for some time and had either a TV or a couch in mind for the gift. Wow! Since we'd made a conscious decision to go without a TV for the time being, we opted for the couch. How amazing that the primary item I'd been hoping God would drop onto our curb ended up being the very first item He provided.

Ta-da! We found this brand-new couch on sale for a great price that included five gorgeous overstuffed pillows. And the material is microfiber, which works great when you have oft-shedding kitties, such as we do. (Thank you, Mom!!)

For instance, Diva likes to shed her hair all over the place . . .

And so, for that matter, does Solomon . . .

But the story doesn't end there, folks! This past Friday night, after we had already picked out the couch with my mom, we went to the Night of Joy festival at Disney with our friends Tom and Cindy, who had received five free passes. After singing at the top of our lungs and dancing to our hearts content at the wonderful David Crowder Band and Chris Tomlin concerts, we headed out of the park near midnight, happy but exhausted. (And we would certainly feel that exhaustion in our leg muscles in the days to come, especially the calves -- from all that jumping up and down!)

On the way to the Monorail that would take us to our parking spots, Tom turned to us and said, "You guys have a complete bedroom set, right?" I didn't think much of this question, even though we'd spent a good length of time earlier in the evening discussing Tom and Cindy's upcoming move into a new home. It seemed like a pretty simple, straightforward question to me, and besides, I was really tired.

"Um, yeah," I said. "I mean, the house came with a full-size bed, but no nightstands. No dressers, either, actually. But we're okay for now." At this point, I was just answering the question, not even connecting it to the question Cindy had posed to me earlier in the evening about a set of backyard patio furniture and whether we had need of any. (We don't.)

"Well, we have a complete bedroom set from our guest bedroom that we can't take with us in the move," Tom replied. "It doesn't come with nightstands, but it's a queen four-poster bed with a dresser and a chest."

Whoa, I thought. A queen-sized bed and a dresser and a chest of drawers?! All of these items sounded like heaven to me.

"And you don't need the set?" I asked.

"Nope."

Now it was becoming clear what was going on: they were offering this furniture to us. I turned toward Kirk and shared the news. We turned back toward Tom and Cindy. "So, are you wanting to sell it, or loan it out until you have need of it again?" Either of these options would have been fine by us, since they'd still mean getting a great set of furniture for much, much less than it would cost to buy a new set.

"Well, if you guys can use it, you can take it off our hands," Tom said.

Double whoa.

So now, because they're moving in two weeks, they need this bedroom set out of their house within the next week. This means that very shortly, another room in our home will be full of next-to-brand-new furniture, for just the cost it takes to move it and then take Tom and Cindy to a nice lunch for being so generous to us, their friends.

God's goodness and lavish behavior just never ceases to amaze me.