More than just a question

In the process of talking to a devout and learned Muslim, I have discovered something that I never really thought of before: it all hinges on the identity of Christ.

If Jesus wasn’t who he said he was, then none of it means anything. But if he is then it means everything. It comes down to how we understand the truth of who God is. Too many people think Jesus is fiction, an option, or worse, a somehow accepted yet blasphemous prophet. He’s a joke, a farce, a crutch, dead, or the son of God. You have to pick one. Not picking isn’t an option, neither is picking an option that doesn’t have some kind of consequence attached to it. But in the last three hours I have gained an education. Many think God and Allah are the same, and too many people have disqualified Jesus all together. “I’m sure he was a nice guy…” is far to polite of an opinion.

The person I talked to believes he is loved by Allah, believes in an all perfect and present god, he believes Jesus was a true prophet who over time was edited into the Son of God, by people who were after something, people who had a situation to manipulate. I didn’t argue, there was no correcting happening, just question after question as we went back and forth. At first I wanted an opening, to find some kind of contradiction in his thought process, but then after a while I just wanted to understand. How do you take Jesus out of the equation? How do you remove that tangible living love? How do you deny the healed scars and pierced flesh, after the tomb? It doesn’t seem to be that hard actually. In fact its pretty easy when you’ve never met Him for yourself.

In that conversation Jesus didn’t need me to defend him, didn’t need me to convince this young man that Jesus lived and not only lived, but was with God in the beginning as God and is alive today. No. he just wanted me to chat freely, safely, and respectfully about my truth and hear in turn about the believed truth of another.

If you believe you are loved then who am I to tell you any different? God had to tell me himself for me to finally believe it and in him. So instead of fluffing my feathers and taking hold of the Google search engine in hopes of finding a sharp and pointed bit of scripture, I’m going to respect the place that you are in, and trust the living God with the rest. I’m going to trust that Jesus is exactly who he said he is.

Holes

… I’m reading Keep Your Love On! by Danny Silk, and it’s been more revealing in the last day, then I was ever prepared for. The buildup happened just in time for the fall, because suddenly it wasn’t just my wall that had a big hole in it, and it wasn’t just my room that needed cleaning out. 

Unrealistic expectations, pressure, the reality of everything from hope to failures… toxins, it all fell at my feet in one emotional heap. At some point while I was gritting my teeth and hiding my face, trying to stop the tears from coming out and feeling my face get Warmer and redder by the second, I realized that this isn’t all on me. My name isn’t carved into this, so why did I sign for it? 

At some point I learned that I was the fixer. I was the shelter. The safe one. And there is nothing wrong with this, it’s a gift. The only time it works against me is when I realize too late that there are things, too many things, I can’t fix, and even more that I can’t do all on my own. It took an interruption of control within my inner world, an accusation, and a tired hearts old fears, for me to begin to see a piece of what I need, and for me to break just enough to let some air in. 

It’s a big enough hole, a window size exit that will be patched up at some point in the “near” future. But its presence in my mint coloured calm and my 9-5 reality, has shaken things off their sandy foundations.

“Sometimes it has to pour till you realize it’s been raining for a while.”

The truth is I’m no ones savior. I’m no ones definition of perfect. I can’t fix you, and I can’t fix me either. I’m not strong enough to carry all your expectations, I can hardly hold onto my own. What I can do is take the pressure off, stop signing my name where only your signature can go. I can breathe. I can let the interruption into my world be patched up by hands who know what they are doing, and I can let God handle my questioning heart. 

I was made to love you, to hear you well and to listen to your heart. I was made with a voice that can ease your fears and voice my own. But beyond all of that I’m just me, someone going through my own mountains and forests filled with hidden quicksand… I’m someone who still needs to learn how to ask for help. 

I can’t do this alone. I’ll help you carry yours, but I’m going to need you to help me carry mine. And understand that sometimes I may have to let go. I’m not God. Thank God. 

Joy

So today at work I was thinking about some friends of mine and all the fearless things that they’re getting up to and all that I’m not, when a sentence bulldozed into my life: “Don’t be ashamed of your joy.” I sat there for a second in a daze while cleaner fluid ran over my hands and the words played over in my head. It was like Jesus was making extra sure I heard him. The whole thing turned into a bit of whispered worship while I folded the laundry, but damn.
People who know me also know my quirks. They know I can go beat red at the drop of a hat and that I’ll cover my face by any means necessary, whether I’m embarrassed, happy, or there happens to be something in my eye that may of may not have anything to do with Pixar related emotions. They also know that I’ve got joy (where? 😉 ). But in that moment of being crouched on the floor despite my leg muscles feeling like they’d been put through a shredder, I realised that I’ve been embarrassed about my joy. Shame seems like a pretty strong word, but it’s truer than I’d like it be, because only the few who really know me and who I feel comfortable around, get to see my weird. Get to see my unabashed happy. And the reason for that is simple embarrassment. A fear of being seen as nothing but silly has stopped me from being genuine.
All that being said, I’m not going to suddenly start dancing every time I feel the urge to, or smile teethy smiles at every stranger I see, but I am going to work on it and take a few steps in that oh so terrifying, yet completely appealing direction. Because joy is nothing to be ashamed of.

The creative itch

My hands are starting to itch. It’s gathering and building in the palms till finally I have to make something, anything, to feel a release. It’s a strange piece of who I think I must be. Created to create, made to build and join this and that till there’s something from all these bits of nothing. For me it’s fabric, colours that no one else thinks should go together, I join and stitch into large messes till suddenly, maybe, it all makes sense. It keeps you warm, it covers your cuddles. Other times it’s a pen or pencil on daunting white pages, far too big for me till fill. The page in all it’s crispness tests me, challenges my will and determination to risk what can not be erased. Sometimes its bake-able clay that covers my hands in white and goes a weird brown colour when you bake it too long. It tries to make life harder for me, giving up the shape I gave it behind the closed oven door. Sometimes the itch is a picture my camera needs help taking, needs my eye to see before the shutter can be pressed.

Creating is something that doesn’t always come naturally to me. Sometimes its amazing, everything just falls out and comes together like it was always supposed to be, and other times it looks like some random kid threw up over everything. But I love art. I love the feeling of starting out, knowing or not having a clue what you’re going to find in the end. I love having paint all over my hands and pencil smudged on my fingers. I love threading the needle and being able to sew for hours at a time.

Did God feel this way when he stitched the veins into leaves and drew the outline of beaches on the shore? Did he laugh at the platypus the way I do at the doodles I draw? Did he ever try his hand more than once at the stars in the sky as I have with the freckles on my characters faces?

What ever God felt when he put the light in the sky and painted the first and last sunrise, I like to think that it’s pieces of that feeling and that love for creating, that has been sprinkled into my life. That’s it’s God’s love for creation that puts the itch in my hands till something, anything, is made. I like to think that bits and pieces of what caused the stars to be made is in me, in how I look at the pebbles on the beach till suddenly I see castles.

God never wanted to be alone in creating this world, he loves the things we make. He loves how our hands can bless each other, bring communities together and help strangers feel like they aren’t alone. We are called to co-create with the creator of every colour and shade, every sound and note.

We are meant for more than capturing and repeating, so if you want to try to make something new, even if it’s only new to you, do it! Paint that painting of purple socks, sew that life-size shark from Jaws, plant gardens in the shape of the Death star and marvel at the colours that come through the leaves. Creation is everywhere, so go make something from nothing.

Being anti “social”

It was four days without Facebook, texting, and Instagram. Four busy, boring, and glorious days. I know that isn’t much of an achievement, but at the same time it’s not exactly a small thing either. This desire to be connected, instantly entertained and known, is a strong one. It’s all so pretty and shiny and… needy… so I left.

I needed a break. I needed a break from talking about nothing and never being able to make a clean getaway. I needed to stop checking and looking and trying to see what was happening or what wasn’t happening. I needed to stop trying so hard at being noteworthy and liked; so when someone(s) unfollowed me on Instagram I took it as an opportunity to just stop.

But still I’m asking; how do you become a bigger fish in an ocean full of billions and millions? How do you do anything worth people commenting on and arguing over? And then maybe more appropriately I ask myself: How do you get to a point of not caring whether or not you had 3 likes, no likes, or a hundred? How. Is the uphill battle worth it? Is shouting into the void hoping that an echo will make its way back to you, worth the sore and tired throat?

It was wonderful taking a break from everyone else’s need and my own lonely self pursuit. To my complete surprise I didn’t miss a thing, and I could have gone longer quite happily, but the curiosity started to build a bit, and somehow everyone else’s edited truth and glorified fictions, make my day-to-day feel a little less trapped in the middle of no where.

Community means something different now than it did before. How we relate to each other is affected by the technology we choose or avoid. So what am I looking for? How am I wanting to connect? How do I want to be known and understood?

Social media isn’t a bad thing, it’s just not the only thing.

Can’t I just have it already???

For awhile now I’ve been asking God for patience. I need it. Patience for people, for work situations, for myself, for life in general. But I forgot how God likes to dish out this gift and life necessity. A friend had to remind me that he doesn’t just hand Patience out like flyers on the sidewalk. Nope. What God does is give you opportunities to “grow” your patience, to work that muscle out till it’s good and strong and nice and firm.

So here I am praying nightly or daily for a free hand out of what I need, and God instead goes and gives me a situation, an opportunity, to CHOOSE to be patient. To TRY and be patient. Damn it. Can’t I just be bitten by some magic spider that drains out all the icky and replaces it with smiles and unicorns? Can’t I just be okay now without having to work for it? The short answer is no. The longer answer is hell no. Nope I can’t. Because anything worth having and worth doing doesn’t come on silver platters or in gloved hands, it comes about when you are willing to get dirty and clean yourself up afterwards. It happens in the moments when someone won’t shut up and you are trapped in a room with them; cleaning other people’s bodily hairs out of a tub or off of the floor… It happens when you still live at home and you’re asked to do something right in the moment that all you ever wanted was to never wake up again.

If you ask for something good, God is going to want to give it you. He’s a good Daddy in that way, wants to bless and maybe even spoil his kids, unfortunately for me and my oh so comfortable life, spoiling doesn’t mean an endless supply of mint M&M’s, it means a word from a friend that tells me I’m not going to sink when all I want to do is stop swimming. It’s opportunities to choose him that God gives. Opportunities to take the highroad, the way out and home, the path over the snide comment and the childlike fit, the detour to the onslaught of mental swearing.

I need patience, and boy has he been giving me opportunities to gain it! So now that I have been reminded that no, life isn’t out to get me, and yes, God in fact does want to help me out, I get to decide how I’m going to respond. To co-workers, to parents, to men, to myself… to life in general. I get to decide when I’m trapped in a hotel room with someone who won’t stop talking, to breathe and respond with kindness instead of full and determined silence. I get to flex my patience muscle and watch it grow, however slowly and painful that growth might be at times.

Numbed out

I had my wisdom teeth taken out a few months ago. It went well enough, most of them popped out within seconds, but one took a few more shots of numbing bliss, and a few more terrifying tugs and scraping sounds before it finally let go. I didn’t have anything to calm me down or knock me out, so I laid there in the chair shaking like a leaf, going cold and colder while the doctor pulled and pushed without warning. But despite all the other details of that experience, the thing that got me the most was how numb my lips and mouth felt. It was strange, the sensation of something being so big that it had to be filling the room, but also so numb that the feeling in my hands was the only proof I had that my lips existed.

The whole lower half of my face was one big, room filling, numbness. And then while I sat there trying desperately not to chomp off a junk of my tongue or cheeks, I had a semi depressing thought; I can’t feel it, but it’s so big that it’s the only thing I know is there… It might be an unfortunate gift of mine to be able to take a dental surgery and apply it to my heart and spiritual life, but I did it pretty easily.

A numbness so big that it’s the only thing I knew was really there. I’d much rather just feel the kiss then the absence of those lips. I’d rather play every card, get the teeth pulled, then wait and wonder “what if”. But sometimes we don’t get the answers we wanted, or any answer at all. Sometimes what we are given is something that hurts, or, if you’re lucky, something you didn’t know you needed. My life isn’t playing out like any movie I’ve seen, I don’t know what’s around the corner, but I do know from experience that choosing to focus on that room filling numbness, trying so hard to never take a bite out of your tongue or cheek, is exhausting.

God I need your help. I need help in knowing what exactly to hold onto and what to let go of. I need help to know that when the medicine wears off it won’t just be pain that I feel, but that hope will follow.

One of the holes still hasn’t closed in the back right of my mouth. Things take time. It takes awhile to be okay, whether it’s a physical hole or not. But the numbness does okay, eventually it stops filling the room and you can feel okay again.

Value Village Check out

When we were in the city a little bit ago, we stopped at one of my favourite places, Value Village. It’s a great spot to get used clothes, or if your prefer, pre loved clothes. I’ve found most of my wardrobe there, in fact every single pair of jeans that I own have covered other people’s bits before they over touched mine.

There are downsides to these donated clothing stores though. Yes the money goes to supporting different shelters and those in need, but the western world seems to like dumping the rejected stuff on other countries, thus wiping out their local businesses. That’s charity for yah. But that’s not what I’m going to write about here, instead I want to tell you about the woman behind the checkout counter.

At first look she was like anyone else I’ve seen but never really looked at. She had a friendly smile and a kind nature. She complemented the coat I had found saying how nice it was and how cheap they had priced it at. Then she went on to say how she had found a $400 pair of designer something, for less than $20 in that very building. It was nice and simple human interaction. And then I noticed her arms. First the scar that ran along the inside of her lower arm, it was the thickness of a small rope and about four inches long. Across this scar was four or six others running parallel to each other. I didn’t plan on staring and tried to send my eyes to a few different places so my curiosity wouldn’t be found out, as my mind tried to figure out what they could have been from. What those scars could have meant. But a second look found that there were more scars all varying in size and age. They covered both of her arms from the wrists to the soft side of her elbows.

In between the glances to her arms I heard the conversation she was having with my Mom. Bits and pieces of retail and pricing and beautiful warm days, all in the spaces between each of the finely laced scars. Years worth of lines had overlapped each other till you had look for skin that hadn’t been cut. She was beautiful. Vulnerable in the fact that her sleeves were short and hid nothing. Anyone, including myself, was free to assume against her, to judge her for a possibly tormented life. Free to assume the abuse of another or of the self. Free to look and maybe see beyond the pale lines of pain and to the smile that greeted you so simply and so kindly as you paid for your finds and new treasures.

She was lovely. She was real. And I tried not to stare.

I don’t know how she got them, the hundreds of cuts that once bled, the stitches that may or may not have been counted and added up. I’ll never know why or who she really and truly is. But the honesty won’t soon be forgotten. The simple honesty of either choosing to wear a short-sleeved shirt or waking up and realizing that nothing else was clean. I won’t know if it was planned, stressed over, struggled with, or just thrown on without a second thought. I’m free to think what I like, and what I like is that to me this was an act of vulnerability in a world full of judges and life sentences.

I never cut myself, but there were a few times where I held the razor and thought “what if?” and “why not?” Moments where I wondered if it would feel any better than the things going on inside. But I never had the pressure in my limbs to force my hand down and across. Never got closer than hovering inches away. Despite the never, I feel like if I had I wouldn’t be able to carry it everywhere with me, that proof of what I had thought and gone through. Have it there for everyone to see and play with. It’s easier for me to carry things that no one else knows is there. Easier for me to choose when to surprise those who know me best or not at all.

I suppose this is a thank you of sorts, to a complete stranger who may or may not have meant anything at all by her wardrobe choices. A thank you to the vulnerability I assumed was being activated and used triumphantly with a smile in a Value Village check out. Thank you, not for going through the pain, but for being un-ashamed at having felt it.

Sleeping with the door open

A dog’s life is a simple thing. They sleep when they’re tired, eat when there’s food, bark when a car drives past and chase things out of the yard. Cats aren’t always the enemy but they aren’t really friends either, and sometimes begging at the table gets you a treat, or it sends you to the other room.

Yep, some dogs have it pretty good. But it wasn’t till this morning with the door left open so the fan could blow the cooler air into my overheated room, that I realized something. Scared awake by my dog Maggie sneaking in and jumping onto my bed, I watched through sleep filled eyes as she curled up at my feet.  After a few seconds I let her know she could come closer and instantly she was in my face, snuggled up to my side, and not going anywhere. Unless, of course, I were to make her leave.

Maggie is a needy dog and she sheds enough every day to knit small sweaters for hairless dogs everywhere. She’ll pull at you with her paws and flat-out sit on you if you aren’t giving her what she needs. She’s also very timid and can make you feel like an animal hating monster, whenever you raise your voice just loud enough that it sends her hiding.

It’s like she knows what we saved her from and just wants to love us and be loved back, in more ways than we think is possible or have the energy for. Her need is constant, but then so is her puppy like affection for us all.

Maggie loves us when we pay attention to her and when we tell her no and push her off the couch. She loves us as she sleeps outside our closed doors, and as she sneaks through our opened ones and onto our messy beds.

She loves us the same at six in the morning as she does at 6 in the evening, how many people can you say the same for?

Dogs really are fairly simple. They sleep when they’re tired, eat when there’s food, and just want to be loved by you.

Be Loved

As a young woman I have learned to expect little from men. Expectations are dangerous and hurt too much, and men, whether they be fathers, sons, brothers, friends, or maybe lovers, don’t come through.

That trip to the zoo that your father promised you when you were little, but never happened because plans changed, taught me to stop asking. The boy who grew up and left your friendship behind in search of something bigger and better, told me that I’m not worth the time and effort to know well. And when the man you thought could be your person, started seeing someone else without a word, that taught me to not be vulnerable. To keep most of me to myself.

Because of all of this I didn’t like it when a man or a boy would hold a door open for me. I’d get uncomfortable when they actually waited for me to catch up and would walk alongside me rather than behind me. I got impatient when they kept offering to carry that heavy basket of groceries or to open that jam jar. I got angry when they didn’t stop trying and kept pushing for me to let them in, for me to let them do anything that I’d “learned” I had to do for myself.

How can any of you be trustworthy? How do I know that I won’t be the last one standing now like I was before? How tragic is it that the walls you have helped my built, need your hands to help me tear them down?

I had put myself in the place of not easily being loved. Instead I was a dare, a test to anyone who tried to be different then the things I already knew: “You will give up. They all do eventually.” So I held the door open for others to walk through, I carried the grocery basket even when my hands began to ache, and I said no when what you wanted was a yes.

I couldn’t let you love me, and not only did that keep myself buried away, it caused the heart of you to fade. I can’t say that I don’t need you in order to be a real women, when I keep thinking that you need me in order to be a real man. We need each other. Not in the sense that we can fix each other or fill all of those empty places and heal all of those heart wounds. But we do need each other in order to be better. To be more of who we really are.

You can’t be a man if I won’t let you be one. I’m not completely weak and defenseless, but there are some dragons that I’m not supposed to fight alone. I’m sorry for taking away your sword. I’m sorry for telling you that your armor isn’t tough enough or your shield strong enough to protect yourself and to defend me, from what I already know. I’m sorry for these scars that have built up walls around my heart. I’m sorry for asking the men before you to tell me who I am, when I should have ever only been asking God.

I’m sorry brothers, friends, and maybe lovers, that I didn’t let you love me. That I didn’t let you be men in my life, for fear that you would turn out to be the very opposite of warriors and kings.

In the process of learning that I am worth the fight and not too much or not enough, I have also learned that some of you are worthy of trust. You have what it takes to stand in the fight and battle through this war. Don’t let our stubbornness disway you, don’t let our determination to keep you at arm’s length, turn you into yet another disappointment. Another bit of proof against you. I need you to keep trying and to keep showing up in all the armour God has given you. Just as I need to keep letting go; to walk through the doors you open and take that hand that’s offered.

I already know I can “do it all on my own”. I don’t want you to tell me who I am; but now I want to learn how to do this with you. To learn how to let myself be loved.