Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Opening the Box

Content warning: This post is a reflection on my experience being triggered by the nation-wide conversation around sexual abuse and assault, which took off with the #MeToo movement and has come back into attention as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford prepares to testify against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. While I don't directly reference anything that would trigger me as a survivor, if you know that this is not content you should be reading right now, close this window and go take care of yourself. 

In some ways, this is a reflection inspired by this article on Slate. It does offer a little bit more hope than I'm able to right now. Still, at the end of the day, I long to live in a world where sexual misconduct is universally condemned and where survivors don't have to relive some of the most difficult times in their lives in order to make a change. If you have the energy to read it, that's what the post below is trying to express. 















Listen, I had put my demons in a box. Sure, they had carried with them safety and intimacy and a whole host of emotions, but at least they were gone. I had locked all of this away as a matter of survival and on the whole, I wasn't all that upset with my life. I had good friends, I had aspirations, I had opportunities for travel. My world was sufficient.

And then I went to a training on preventing child abuse, both physical and sexual, and I couldn't understand why all I could do was stare at the table as the statistics were read and the presenter tried hard to get the people in the room to understand how widespread the problem was and how urgent the need to address it. My hands clenched into fists under the table, grasping tight to the lid of my demons' box, but by the end of the training, I had resources and I had plans for action and I grasped those as tight as I could. By the end of the year, I would be pushing for an update on my church's Safe Sanctuary policy and running a short training on the policy and on recognizing abuse. The demons might have rattled the box, but I took courage from it. I chose to confront as much of my past as I was able to at the time and it galvanized me. I made a difference.

From time to time over the next few years, the box would shake, but never burst. There would be tremors, but the world would always right itself again after. Sometimes, I'd walk over to the box, because I knew that I had locked away good, important things in there too, things that I needed, but anytime the chance came to open it, I ran away. I'm very good at running away.

Up until the day that I wasn't. That day, I felt secure in myself and buoyed by the possibility of new and good and exciting things, and I walked up to the box and opened it up, standing still and strong in the face of what might come. My demons, hungry for fresh air, rushed out and away and I could gather the good things from my box and close it back up, empty. For a time, I waited for my demons to come home, but days and weeks passed and it seemed like maybe I was free.

And then #MeToo happened. Then everything was story after story after story of abuse and assault, affirmation upon affirmation that women should be believed, that all survivors regardless of gender should be believed, article after article of the horrors of surviving, reporting, being disbelieved, being retraumatized, putting yourself back together and getting torn apart again and again. The conversation around sexual abuse and assault was everywhere and it was important and I felt that I had to participate, so I did. And as I did, my demons came home to roost.

Now, I'm strong. I know this. I know that I am loved and that I am valuable and that I did not cause my demons. I know that I am worthy of feeling powerful emotions, of safety, of intimacy. I know that I can't box all this back up again. But the demons go after these strengths. The demons use old lies and speak them again in new ways. The demons take the breath out of my lungs and the thoughts out of my head and leave me trapped in this vacuum chamber with no light, no sound, no life. They're only in my head but somehow they paralyze me. They are ancient and have worked against stronger people than me. To fight them seems impossible. Better to let them do what they're going to do and hope there's something of me left when the air comes back. So far, there has been.

But I don't have time to be fighting demons. I have so much else that I need to do. I want to hear the stories of survivors who explain #WhyIDidntReport, want to sit with them in their grief and pain, the pain that I know so well, but I can't. I want to pay attention to Dr. Ford's testimony on Thursday, but I can't. I want to share posts that say that I stand with survivors, but I can't. Every time I turn my attention to this conversation, my demons pound at my door, at the barriers I've put up, and they tear at me until I can't stand being in my own head anymore. Demons are fed by this world we're living in right now. They are strong and they do not keep to the shadows. And I do not have much hope that that will change anytime soon.

God, how long will we have to do this? How long will people take another's body and use it the way they want, whenever they want, without consequence? How long will this fight continue? How long will I have to stand against the guilt and shame and fear that should never have been mine? God, why do you let us live like this? God, why do you let this hurt me?

Jesus, Lord, we need a change.

Thursday, September 20, 2018

Glass

It is difficult for me to resist the temptation of fragmentation, for me to acknowledge the value of wholeness when wholeness is such a struggle in these times of ours. It is much easier to accept the fragmentation pushed upon me rather than to seek the wholeness I know I should want, easier to set my emotions in a box for later, when I can actually deal with them, or ignore that pain in my back until I finish the assignment, or sit and stare at my newsfeed until the tidal wave of ignored feelings and pains dulls and I can use my mind again. Mine is a functional fragmentation, a resignation to the idea that I cannot carry the entirety of me throughout my day, that I do not have the currency, the value, or the energy needed to be whole.

I heard a sermon recently where the preacher shared a story with a distinct image. The preacher had had a dream while writing the sermon, and in it, he had a mouth full of shards of glass. He asked us to imagine that, imagine what a mouthful of broken glass would feel like, and that was a powerful moment for me. You cannot help but be aware that your mouth is filled with glass. Every breath cuts. You can't speak, you can't smile, can't laugh, can't scream. You feel like you will suffocate taking these short, shallow breaths through your nose, like your jaw will freeze in the slightly open position you have adopted to accommodate the glass. You keep your teeth together and your lips closed because if these shards of glass fall out, they will shatter even more, spattering blood from your mouth onto the floor, and no one will be able to approach you to tend your wounds for fear of being harmed themselves. You know that what is inside of you is dangerous, and as the panic sets in, you wonder how long you can keep the danger from escaping.

Now, the preacher himself was not as captivated by the image as I was, instead moving on to connect the image of a mouth full of broken glass to the one found in Ezekiel 3, where the prophet gets a mouthful of scroll and it tastes like honey, and to make an important point about the necessity of good preaching. But if Ezekiel's scroll, Ezekiel's words from God, taste like honey, then this image that we're working with, this broken glass, surely means that there are words from God that are sharp, and cutting, and difficult to speak. They are words that were never meant to stay inside of us, but will require some pain and some loss to speak. We will need to be careful with them. We will need help. But we cannot keep these words inside of ourselves. They will kill us.


I would give anything in the world for this glass to pour out of my mouth, to fall on the ground in a million colors and settle into a pattern of stained glass beauty, all sensible and lovely and prophetic. I would love to let go of these little fragments of pain that absorb my attention, that stop me from caring for myself, that stop me from caring for others. We all have mouths full of glass sometimes, I think, times when we ourselves have shattered and fragmented and the things that cause us pain must be spoken, and when we speak them, if we speak them carefully, and purposefully, these things become holy words. They become words of prophecy, words from God, summoning the four winds and bringing life into places that had been dead. These shards that we carry, afraid to let them fall, can, in time, scatter goodness into the world.

But it is not easy. It is not without cost. It is not without struggle.

It is difficult for me to resist the temptation of fragmentation, difficult to stand against the lie that I cannot be whole, should not try to be whole, and so I stand with my teeth together and my lips closed and breathe these short shallow breaths through my nose that will in time suffocate me and I forget that I was not made to be this way. But let me now speak that truth into existence. Let me breathe life into the things I have forgotten. I was not made to be shattered. None of us were.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Open up.










It would be irresponsible of me to place an invitation like that at the end of a piece and not have any resources available to those who might be struggling with what's going on inside of them. If you are not in a place to be reading or thinking about suicide or self-harm, it's okay to stop reading now. There are resources below for those who want to scroll on.











First and foremost, for those who are wrestling with suicidal thoughts, you are loved and there is help. If you don't feel that you can reach out to a friend or family member, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7 at 1-800-273-8255.

If that's not your situation, you can still get help from a counselor, therapist, or other mental health professional. I think everyone can benefit from therapy. You can start by looking for a therapist here and if you need any help at all on that journey (which isn't always an easy one), please reach out to me. Some mental health professionals have sliding scales and flexible meeting options if that's something that you need. I can recommend the Calm Harm app that might help those who struggle with self-harm or thoughts of self-harm as an aid to mental health treatment, but not a replacement.

We all carry difficult things around inside of us, but the beauty of the gospel is that we are loved by the deep Love that made the cosmos and we do not have to stay as we are when we are broken and hurting. That Love lives in each of us, and brings us to care for each other. If you need help, reach out. If you don't need help but you know someone who does, reach out to them with gentleness and without judgement. I'm on firmer ground than I've been in a while and it's because of the love and support that has been shown to me by so many people in my life as I've started therapy and have, in fits and starts, begun to take better care of this body I live in. If anyone reading this needs any kind of help, let me know.

Friday, September 7, 2018

Pictures

One of my best friends is getting married today.

I have so many feelings.

It's not exactly like when my best friend from growing up got married and my other best friend from middle school and I got to the wedding a little bit late, having to sit on the groom's side of the packed church as she walked down the aisle to a hymn that made me think to myself, "This is why we're friends," and also, "I'm glad I'm not getting married anytime soon because I'm 100% copying all of the music for this ceremony." That day was full of joy and laughter and reunions with high school friends and the absolute ideal reception. I was so happy for Sarah and Robs and in love with their story and I involuntarily smile now seeing pictures of their kids and their life.

And it's nothing at all like when my older brother got married. I was and continue to be so happy for Stephen and Lindsey, but I was involved in that wedding (and its many pictures) and being so close to what is, best case scenario, a pivotal moment in two people's lives made me reflective. I made this video about how marriage is, in a way, our shout into the void, and I, remarkably, stand by most of that more than a year later. I did a lot of my formative thinking about what a life-long partnership could and should look like in the past couple of years, and I still think of it as this beautiful thing, this lovely attempt to go forward into this world that will disappoint us, holding someone else's hand, struggling against the current that pulls all of us back. Thoughtful, caring, dedicated marriages have legs. If you do this right, you can walk for miles and miles.

Today, as Pamela and Brock celebrate the ceremony that solemnizes their promises to each other in front of those who are important to them, I find myself trying and failing to work on schoolwork at Pamela's house, this little home of hers that I adore that will, in short order, belong to someone else as she makes a new home with Brock. I'm so excited for her, so excited that she found someone who smiles at her the way everyone wants to be smiled at, who jokes and laughs with her, who holds her when she needs it and who is willing to be held, who brings his family and his world together with hers in a delightful bouquet of people and stories and love. Pamela was there with me when I first decided that opening up to people was a good thing to do, and she has been there with me since, going on adventure after adventure, climbing mountain after valley after mountain. She has been there with me as both of us have figured out what love between two people could look like. I could not be more happy that she has found someone who can be the love of her life.

See, Pamela values people. This is her fridge:


It is covered with photos of friends and family. It holds memories of travels and adventures and important life moments. In her kitchen, in this central place where many of us just move through our days mindlessly feeding what needs to be fed, she wallpapers her space with the people who are important to her. She actually prints out physical photos of people and moments near and far. In this world of distance and remove, Pamela re-embodies us.

It's not just her fridge. She's a fan of collages as well, one of which features this delightful picture of me in Iceland:


I love that Pam chose this to go in the collage. I believe we were hunting waterfalls on this day, trusting the GPS in our car to navigate us from one place to another. In this picture, I am a few days past having left Edinburgh, a week away from moving to my new place in DC, and my hair is a fluffy nightmare. But we had been singing and that whole day had been this glorious exploration of beauty and wonder and dampness. I love that jacket, love the way we're smiling. Even though I cringed the first time I saw it on the wall, there are so many gorgeous aspects of this moment. I'm glad it's immortalized here.

So, to the woman who tends to find beauty in the times where even I fail to see it, and to the man who has made her so happy over the past two years, I wish you the very best. I pray that the days ahead, be they easy or hard, will be filled with joy, patience, hope, faithfulness, and love. I pray that you will always be able to see in each other the wonderful, worthy, glorious, valuable person that you see in each other today, and that as the years stretch out in front of you and redefine what family means to you, you will find the strength within yourselves and each other to persevere in this world that is so temporary, so finite. Make an infinity, my friends. I'm forever thankful that I'll be here to see you do it.

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Weather

"How's the weather?"
"Rain."
"Oh."
"Light rain, which is not too bad. Coupla showers."


I'm listening to this conversation as I'm supposed to be studying or reading or something in the library and it exhausts me. Not that I wasn't already exhausted. Not that I haven't been exhausted. But it exhausts me anew. My exhaustion is perennial and it isn't helped by light rain.

God, what I wouldn't give for a thunderstorm.

Not one of these pathetic thunderstorms that we've been having, which are mostly heat lighting and booms and drizzle, but a real deluge, one that lasts all night and rattles the windows. Or better yet, give me rain for days. Soak me in it. Leech all that humidity out of the air and condense it into droplets and let it fall fall fall fall fall until the sky is cried out. It has been so hot lately. So stagnant. You feel like you're swimming when you walk outside. The air is needy and clingy. It's hard to breathe, hard to walk, hard to exist. A coupla showers are not going to fix this. I need the heavens to open up.

But how can I ask for a deluge? At worst, it would cause flooding and at best, traffic delays. Not that I think this is a prayer that would be answered, either, because I don't think the weather or God work like that, but I feel selfish anyway, wanting, needing something that would cause problems for someone else. Best to just deal with the humidity. Shave my legs, wear dresses, make my body presentable for the heat. Carry extra water to replace the gallons that must be escaping through my skin. Make smiley faces in the condensation on windows because if you can't joke about your discomfort, you're not mourning properly.

But all of that requires energy. Energy that I don't have. Energy that I can't find through all this water in the air that refuses to fall. God, if you would just give me one good storm, to clear the air, to electrify me, I promise that I'd be better. I wouldn't just spend the day staring at the drops as they feed into the puddles, I swear. I'd go out and dance in it, splash around, be delighted. Pinky-swear, I would. Just give me the chance. Give me a thunderstorm and I promise I'll be better. God, don't you want me to be better?

In one version of the story, I bet Jonah prayed for the whale.