thrashing: day 31: give voice

don't you hate when your computer freezes, forcing you to shut it down, just as you were finishing a blog post? and then it's somehow not even registered in your drafts, so you've lost all your words and all the formatting you just spent all that time on? and the post was all about using your voice, your words, even if you don't know anyone is listening? yeah, me neither. never happened to me.

let's see if i can bring back the highlights:

i have a voice.

it is quiet.

especially when i'm not sure people are listening. 

especially when i notice someone is listening.

it makes me want to stop and suck all my words back into my mouth, make sure they were worth saying. because if someone's listening? it means i am speaking, and maybe i have something worth saying, but maybe i don't.

i backpedal as soon as i see the eye contact, the nod, the comment. it makes me nervous when people listen. it makes me feel like something is wrong.

i only raise my hand to speak up when i know the answer. the right one.

and if my answer ends up being wrong? the heat of shame spreads fire across my face, and my words fall like ash.

but i have this sense that it is time. to open myself, open my mouth, no matter what happens.

she says, "you are an incredible writer. you just need to see it for yourself." she is right about this: i have to believe it for myself before i will start moving forward as if my voice matters. (but i'm not there yet most days)

they say, "you should sell your art! it is amazing!" (but i know all that goes into that and the energy and time commitment to dreams that may not pay off.) i've been there, done that.

but i am no longer "the stuck one",  you know.

and i really do long to move my words and art beyond the confines of this studio, to let them be held and touched on all possible sides, let them move out of me and fly free to unknown destinations, where they will have the chance to be cherished, rejected, loved, burned, seen. where they can move with another spirit in grace and freedom and truth.

so.

i am moving toward this. toward myself. toward God. toward exercising the muscles i have been given. toward putting myself out there, going naked.

and also.

i'm doing NaNoWriMo.

the end.

goodbye october, hello november!

(here's to putting voice to the story-currents in me! *cheers!*)

thrashing: day 29: notice your rhythms

good night.

thrashing: Day 25: Walk away

i am waiting, anxious for the patient to arrive. the paramedics called ahead about the 3-year-old girl they are bringing. they wheel her in, surrounded. there are EMTs on the bed with her so they can continue CPR between the ambulance and the emergency room.

compressions. breaths.

starting IVs, giving drugs, fluid boluses, electrolytes.

compressions. breaths.
compressions. breaths.

we continue what they have started as we hook her up to monitors and keep administering fluids, drugs.

compressions. breaths.

with any other patient, my morbid coworkers would have referred to her as "already dead".

but how do you give up on a 3-year-old girl?

compressions. breaths.

drugs. keep checking for any signs of life.

she is cold and we warm her. you can't "call it" until her body is still not responding, even at normal temperature.

i step in for my turn of compressions as someone continues with the mask giving her breaths to my right. i will myself to numbness as i press deep into her chest, little hope left.

compressions. breaths.

the doctor is running through all the possibilities, resisting letting go of this little one. the nurses, too, are fighting for her, refusing to give up even as the doctor is saying "time of death:..."

and yet. she was already dead.

nothing we could have done would have made any difference. but we had to try.

and then? walk away.

***

there came a moment for me three years ago that literally felt like a resuscitation.

i was alive for what felt like the first time.

and, so, naturally, i wanted to invite everyone into this newfound freedom. i would tell my story and ask about theirs.

but they seemed numb. they couldn't see the beauty i saw of going deeper and freer. they were content.

i kept trying to be the person breathing air into dead structures, trying to circulate Life and healing in the deepest venous caverns.

but they didn't seem to want what i was offering. they wanted to stick with their safe system that felt so soul-killing to me.

and as i offered the life i had been given, and received only offers that felt like death in return, i knew.

i had to walk away.

(for now)

(because how do you give up on them? they are still so beautiful. so worth loving.)

thrashing: day 20: visit the dark

my back is against the wall as i sit on the floor in a dark house. when it is dark, i always keep my back against something.

i sit here as a dare, to see how long i can stand it before my juvenile-feeling fear of the dark kicks in and i jump up to illuminate the corners, so rats will have to scurry away, shadows disappear.

but i am finding myself strangely at peace in the darkness. it is the first time i ever remember it feeling comfortable and actually even soothing to just sit here in the calm of the night.

it is as though my vision disabled is allowing my spirit to expand farther, be aware of more. allowing me space to breathe.

i notice my breath. the shallow, the warm in and out, inhale, exhale, cycle.

i notice the sound of bubbling fountain water in the backyard next door.

but mostly i notice my internal workings.

surprised by my response to sitting alone in darkness, i am intrigued; suddenly more brave to move into the places in my own soul that have been so long darkened. those cavernous rooms that have had bits of rubble cleared away from the last cave-in before fear initiates another rumble and the way in is blocked again.

i don't want to be afraid of the dark, like i have been my entire life.

i want to leave the light pollution of the suburban sky and plunge into actual dark, where the only light is real light. starlight. moonlight. where the night is truly that perfect inky black.

i want to explore the dark side of the moon, the hidden places. the unseen.

i want to dive down beneath the first few feet of water, still warmed by the memory of the sun, to the cold sunken-treasure-filled deeps.

to move around in the cave, only by touch, and see what there is to discover, what there is that can be held close and secret.

{and yes, even brought out into the light of day.}

Thrashing: Day 18: Celebrate freedom

i'm shaky as i write this.

i don't know if it's the glass of wine, or tired muscles from dreading my first nine locks, or if it's the unsteady steps i am taking toward freedom. 

i am free. i know this.

but there is a cost to living out this freedom, to choosing it - over, say, people-pleasing. 

and i have been unable to make that leap. 

but tonight, i think it finally clicked. maybe. 

tonight i danced barefoot on my front lawn under a full moon. it occurred to me more than once "what the neighbors would think/say", and i did it anyway. this is a new thing for me.

then i came inside, and with this song playing loud in my soul, i began the slow work of dreading my own hair.

i have been waiting, and i think part of me was waiting for permission from someone, in the form of agreeing to help create these dreadlocks i have been wanting for months. i hoped some kind of community would be available to me, their grace and acceptance and time and muscles. 

but tonight, as i was consciously choosing to step into my purpose, into freedom, it became clear that it was time. 

i am home alone this weekend, my boys at their grandparents, so i can engage with the Secret Rebel Club's virtual retreat. my husband doesn't even know, and here i am knotting my hair up beyond recognition.

and i love it.

i feel beautiful.

i feel like me.

i feel free.

Thrashing: Day 17: Declare holy ground

here. now. this is sacred. this is holy.

Thrashing: Day 15: Get naked

"My own belief is that one regards oneself... as an instrument for experiencing. Life - all of it - flows through this instrument and is distilled through it into works of art. How one lives as a private person is intimately bound to the work. And at some point, I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth. If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilt, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human being and artist, we have to know all we can about one another, and we have to be willing to go naked."  --May Sarton

i can't even describe the fear that slowly rises through my chest as i consider these words and the vulnerability they suggest.

the problem is, i agree with them one hundred percent. 

but the panic that envelops me belies the fact that i have been totally unable to do this. get naked. vulnerable.

this is an anonymous blog, because i have felt unable to interact with certain people over all this thrashing, and so i hide this way. 

there is the hiding, and, on the other hand, there is the safety of anonymity that does allow me to bare my most vulnerable spots, and so this is some of the most honest writing i have ever shared in my life.

so there is either the held-back, acceptable one, connected to my name.

or the anonymous let-it-all-out one.

i have occasionally considered letting people know this is my blog. but then i think about how they reacted to my last vulnerable post on the blog linked to my name, and i shudder. i couldn't. 

or could i?

**** update: [9 months later] i did****

Thrashing: Day 14: Flirt with mystery

i am always amazed at the synchronicity.

my process involves choosing one of a dozen coverless books off my shelf and ripping a random page out of the middle somewhere, and then repeating with a second random book.

and somehow it always speaks.

today i drew the phrase "flirt with mystery" from my little broken china bowl. and as i was processing genesis and the creation of humans, these were the words from the pages.

it's as if he's affirming "yes! flirt with mystery! you will find Me there, the Wild One wrapped in mystery..." 

Thrashing: Day 12: Push a hand away

What is most interesting to me is that though the fear washes over me in waves, there is a bravery i have never felt before. A willingness, a desire, a passion to fight. I'm aware of a commitment to be in the dungeon for as long as it takes. So much so that I am fighting off the hands that are reaching down for me from the lightworld above. "Let us save you," they say. "Let us fix you," they call. "Let us dry your tears. Let us overwhelm you with light once again so you'll forget all of this, and it will be just a dwindling nightmare." Where were these concerned voices when I was drowning in all that light, living an empty religious life?

                                                                                                       - Mandy Steward, Thrashing About with God

periodically, throughout this time of absence from church, i receive a message from friends who want me to return. they promise me it won't be weird, and that the longer my absence, the more the darkness will win. they pray for freedom from my chains, and my heart responds "isn't this the freest i have ever been??"

i know they love me. i know they are well-meaning. but they cannot love me well right now. they are not a safe space for my heart.

for a while, i was responding to their messages, defending my decision to take a break, trying to help them see how this was God leading me away into the wilderness for a time. but they would see only "do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together" and tell me the Spirit would never prompt something that goes against His Word.

maybe so.

but maybe it's possible that the interpretations they are working with are too narrow, even as they try to apply them too broadly.

Because I would never naturally take this course - it had to be divine intervention to prompt me to move away from the expectations and toward his heart (as i have said before, rebellion is a spiritual discipline for me - it is not my bent. i am wired as a "good girl", and am slowly unlearning, rewiring).

i had to quit "stating my case" a few months in, since it always seemed to fall on ears that care about me, but care about being biblical more. 

my heart is not held in that space. 

so, i have stopped responding.

{{but i feel the urge to run just under the surface of that healthy boundary, so i think this silence with them will only be for a time. because i am sick of running, hiding, avoiding their judgments and questions i have no answer for. i am sure i will need to stand, as myself, even in their presence, at some point.}}

but not yet. right now? i run, and run wild.

"Don't you dare!" I yell back. "This is not about you. I'm sorry that it makes you uncomfortable to see me this way, but you're not going to rob me of this richness. I am with God. He is here. Imagine that. In the darkness. There is no place I'd rather be. And I will come out when He says we are done, because I want to be healed this time. I want the holes in my body to be forever mended, even if there are brutal scars to show for it. When i resurface, I want to be able to contain the fullness of God within me without it leaking out all over the place. Down here, I am closer to my life to the full than I ever was soaking up sun on the beaches of pretending and performance and duty and devotion. Leave me alone. This is something I must see to."    

                                                                                                                          -Mandy Steward, Thrashing About with God

Thrashing: Day 11: Break tradition

my life is breaking tradition right now.

i have quit going to the church i attended for 15 years. my husband and sons still go every week, and i stay home, and i am told often how much my absence is felt. and yet i refuse to go back. [not yet. maybe never.] not until i know my heart and my God so intimately that i will not collapse in shame every time i walk through the doors, hear the voices.

i am blacking out most of the words of a bible. and responding to the words with my own poetry that is totally "outside the box" as far as what it is actually saying in the text.

i want to get dreads, and a tattoo (or two or three).

i am not a "traditional" stay-at-home-mom. i refuse to allow tasks like cleaning and cooking consistently to take precedence over being present with my own heart and the hearts of my family. i have refused to allow a get-your-shit-together, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of attitude to reign.

this has been an issue lately, as it is apparently not as okay with other people as it is with me (with us - my husband, though a clean house significantly decreases his anxiety level, is totally on board with the "hearts first" thing). i have had multiple situations recently that have ended up being underhanded jabs at my inability to maintain a put-together household. comments from family members; coming to our house and cleaning for me because they think/say "well, someone needs to do it."

my mother-in-law interrupted my usually peacefully quiet sunday morning this week, to "surprise us" with hiring someone to come clean our house (this, it turns out, was because a family member was coming to visit, and she couldn't handle the thought of it not looking like her kids had their stuff together).

i guess it is just not a traditionally valid option for a mother to have interests that take her time away from these tasks.

but. i have to create. it's just not an option not to for me anymore. it is my space for connecting, and i will keep choosing it, whether it is accepted or not. because the demands of tradition do not rule my life any longer - the spirit does.

Thrashing: Day 9: Say I am tired of....

i have started this post 5 different times now, and apparently i'm tired of a lot, because it goes in a different direction each time. everything from:

i am tired of not sleeping through the night

to

i am tired of thrashing. 

 and everything in between.

but this morning i am finding myself wanting to make a declaration out of it.

{{{i am tired of letting fear and shame win.}}}

it is a daily battle, and my soul has so long known the hunched over deformity of carrying the weight of shame, that it's too easy to slide right back into shouldering it, when this shame? it isn't mine. it is a lie. 

but it's comfortable to me. 

it's what i've always known.

so, to choose the truth [of my worth] is always a battle, and i always enter it with fear. there is so much to be afraid of. failing, succeeding, being wrong, being arrogant,  being unseen, being intimate. being misunderstood.

but, today, i am taking that risk.

after all, my name is Braveheart.

Thrashing: Day 3: Create Your Own Church

[maniacal laugh]

this has been the quest of my year, deep down under it all. to find (or create) a space that is "church" for me.

because the walls i was being held in by were not giving life. and i need life.

i stopped attending the church campus we helped to plant two years prior, in february. and i have had criticisms, pleas, and eye-rolls my direction. but never a "what you believe God is leading you into is valid." i only intended to stay away a few weeks, take a breather, get my feet under me, begin to exercise my voice and learn to hear His over Theirs. but the cacophony of their responses has made it feel unsafe for my tender places, so for now, i have stayed away.

but i have needed the body. and i have found the body. i see incarnate love every single day in this space i have found, this online community that refuses to settle for being less than jesus-with-skin-on. i see women loving each other and loving jesus and wrestling their way through the hardest of questions TOGETHER. i have seen people held, and people called out to live courageously into their calling when they were hesitating. we sit with each other in pain, and dance through each others' delights.

we are a varied fabric, woven hopelessly together, for better or worse, so that we are bound to love each other.

i didn't create this space, but i am part of its church. i bring my heart to the table as they bring theirs, and we thrash, and are never alone.

there are pastors among us, offering "church in the wild" for ones who need words of life poured in. and really, that is what we are always offering each other. words of life. we are seeing each other. and we offer our selves, our own courage and hope and light for the others to catch when theirs is failing. we are moving ever closer to our purposes and the One who gave them, each unique.

we wrestle through hard things like family and the bible and feminism and modesty culture and what happens when you have to leave church? (you find church, in the wild). 

somehow we all bring more of our deep selves to this space, pieces we wouldn't dare unveil to the ones who have touched us and judged us even so.

this is a beautiful, amazing thing, this space that is shepherded by ones who love us, who see us deeply.

at its core, church is worship and community.

and, ideally, that community would be able to give hugs, and come over and hold my baby while i nap after a particularly sleepless night, or i could drop one kid off for a playdate while i take the other one in for shots. we could borrow things from each other and share fresh-baked and brewed kind of love. we could dread each others' hair.

i have hope for this kind of tactile community one day, but i wish everyone had a safe and beautiful space like the one i have found.

i wouldn't trade it for anything.

Thrashing: Day 2: Take Scandalous (amounts of) Self Portraits

self-portraits are scary.

self-portraits are liberating.

self-portraits let you see.

self-portraits force you to look.

take a longer look//notice with compassion//what you love//who you are

notice with compassion//the holy work of sitting with self//who you are//truth-gaze

the holy work of sitting with self//what you love//truth-gaze//take a longer look.

there is something subversive about a self-portrait. we are taught from birth to look out and not in, not to make too much of ourselves. i have been told recently that this journey i am on, of discovering my true self, wrestling with questions of beauty and identity and worth? that i am looking the wrong direction. ("turn your eyes only on jesus"; "you're being selfish") but he has allowed me to discover deep desire, to move toward dreams and self, and he moves with me.

i have needed to find me in order to have a "me" to be in relationship with. Thomas Merton says:

so, i will keep looking, and keep shooting and painting and sharing. even when the very idea of my own beauty is painful, a deep wound. i will be brave, and keep asking, keep looking, keep seeing me.

"so let them think our eyes are hollow for a bit, because, friend, we've got some dancing to do down deep." - Mandy Steward, Thrashing about with God

Thrashing: day 1: Write your own Bible

Mandy Steward's book Thrashing About with God: Finding Faith on the Other Side of Everything was released today, and i am two chapters in. i've already decided i don't need to write a memoir anymore, since she already has (don't worry,  writer friends, i'm just kidding - i know MY story is important. it's just the similarities are...eerie).

and God has already spoken to tender places in my heart.

this book, it is connected to my story in many ways, and is beyond where i have allowed myself freedom to go, in so many ways. i had both fear and excitement before beginning its pages. i had to write myself a "permission slip" before i read the first lines, to remind myself of freedom to thrash, unafraid of my final destination.

Mandy is one of the co-creators of The Art Journaler community, where i have spent much time this past year. Each month, they send out a download for us to have prompts to work from in our art journal, or to set intention for our days. This month, October, since her book came out today, the prompts revolve around themes within her book. some of them look very dangerous at first glance (and may very well be). Last night, i cut apart the typed phrases, without paying much attention to their words. i read some, and a few made me think: "i hope i don't draw that one until later in the month, when i've read enough of the book to have context for it." This was one of those.

"write your own bible", it said. Whaa...?

but as i held it at arm's length (literally. i'm farsighted.), i focused on what was directly behind this little subversive piece of paper in my hand. and realized that i have been doing exactly that. well, not exactly that. i began a new project a few days ago, and it involves:

*marking out huge chunks of the bible (yes, like IN an actual bible - gasp! it's a One-Year Bible that we have been meaning to "get rid of" and i rescued it.) to create "blackout poetry".

*meditating on one word that "shimmers" from a bible passage, contemplating ripe meanings within its phrases.

*free writing about themes that emerge, then creating a pantoum poem from favorite lines:

in deep waters//empty, waiting, like a dark womb//having only ever known: alone//until the light

empty, waiting, like a dark womb//the spirit moves//until the light//birth soon to be witnessed

the spirit moves//having only ever known: alone//birth soon to be witnessed//in deep waters.

*and finally a "found poem", cut and pieced from random book pages. 

i have been afraid of the bible. for years.

it has been a full three years since i stepped out of the darkest , most despairing time of my life (so far) into new light. and it has been beauty and freedom and spirit-whispers and desire.

but the bible? it still had all the same language it did in all my growing-up years, and when i read it, it was heavy with baggage of decades of knowing all the right answers. all those "right" answers that no longer had the same meaning for me, walking in this new life. and so, i haven't spent much time in it. i have had moments of feeling guilty, like i "should" be able to read scripture without feeling so triggered back to the shame of before. but walking in freedom requires of me not to obligate myself when i am in a season of needing something different. and he has been nothing but tender, grace-full, aching with me for my heart's freedom. 

so there was this moment, a couple weeks ago, where a friend was teaching a workshop, and used a bible passage glued down as the base layer for what she was creating. and as i followed along, glancing here and there, making connections within the passage, i discovered that i wasn't afraid (well, maybe a little). i felt free coming to the bible for the first time in ages. granted, i chose the passage that has felt most "safe" to me - galatians 5 - i can get on board with being free, and refusing to put old chains back on, and being led by the spirit.

but as i worked through it, i found myself alive (this was very unexpected), and i suddenly wanted to do this for the whole bible (a lofty goal? perhaps)...! and the friend i confessed this to said, "i would buy that book, even if i wasn't a christian anymore!!" 

imagine. a book of art and found poetry, created as i thrash my way anew through old words? abstract reflection and interaction with ages-old text, and the heart of God? i want that book.

and i have been waiting to find "my book", since i am 8 weeks into a 12-week writing course whose intent was to come out with a manuscript; but all i was writing seemed to fall flat. nothing seemed right.

but this? this is me.

this is my journey, moving quietly in rhythm with the spirit, no cold-hard-fact answers; only whispers and questions and creating and receiving.

last week, i began in genesis, and have made it through the first four days of creation.

and i have to tell you: it has been incredible. and whether or not it ends up published as an official book, this process...? it has already been invaluable and life-giving for me.

and i hope the glimpses will refresh you, too

"October is a fine and dangerous season...a wonderful time to begin anything at all." - Thomas Merton

here is to #31days of thrashing