Today is hard. My friends are tired and worn out. I wish I had more to give them. I wish the world was a kinder place. I wish there were more people radically committed to loving all of the people.

I have grown up in religious circles and I know that folks inside and outside of the church like to talk about loving people, accepting people, and a 1000 variations of that. The idea gets rebranded every few years with a different emphasis. But for those of us doing the work, it looks the same year after year. It looks like exhaustion, humility, a little anger, and a dim hope.

It looks like listening to everyone. At least, everyone who is a person. That does not include the media, corporations, and politicians. Sometimes a politician is a person and sometimes they aren't. It's complicated. But when something happens in this crazy world, the first place I go is to the individual. There are people telling their story for profit and I don't have time for them. There are also people telling someone else's story for them. They don't always mean to do it. They often mean well, but they aren't helping. Then there are people who are telling their story because they are trying to make sense of the world, trying to connect, and trying to survive. Those are my people. They will always be my people. In every crisis and change. In the mundane days. Loving people means listening to them.

And with that comes believing people about their experiences. None of us get it all right. But it is a true spiritual discipline to remind ourselves that the skepticism that we feel about social media, the news, and our governments should not drive us to doubt our neighbor and the people around us in the same way as FOX or CNN. We need to lean in to the people around us instead of away. Even though they are different. Even though they disagree or think about things in a completely different way. Even though none of us are always good or right. Even though it is SO MUCH WORK to understand and to be understood. 

In recent years, the people around me have noticed that I don't let certain things slide as easily as I used to. That I have strong opinions about race, gender, mental health and so on. I'm a white, straight, Christian, mostly healthy, definitely able, woman. It's hard to feel like I have a right to talk about the difficulties that others face. It's hard to feel like I have the right to stay silent too. And there's the rub. My friends are tired. My people are tired. They are tired of teaching and advocating and trying to explain that these tiny instances of racism, classism, sexism, ableism etc. all add up, weigh them down, isolate them, and communicate that they are less than. Less worthy, less welcome, less human.

Loving them means sharing the load. Loving them means shedding the comfort of my silence. Loving them means saying "putting down any people group lowers all of us". Loving them means letting them rest while I do my best to explain what I've learned from living life with them, from the stories they've shared, and from believing them about their experiences.

I've been accused of caring more about these ideas of equality than people. What I think that person meant was that I care about strangers as much as my own family. And I won't apologize for that.

I have been listening to people's stories for long enough to know that we all have more in common than we have been lead to believe. Strangers and the vulnerable occupy a sacred role in Scripture, along with our enemies. It's easy to take care of our family. You know what's hard? Telling your family that the way they talk about someone is hurtful, that the way they look at a people group is misinformed and damaging, that they haven't been listening to the person but to the noise from the media about people like that. Risking the respect of your close network for those who don't have a community is scary.

But I am convinced that this is the radical love displayed in the Gospel and that it is my task to keep trying to to build a bigger table until everyone that Christ loves can sit together. But we must be people who will come to a table set for diversity that is both foreign and familiar. That seats me and the other side by side. We are only as welcome as the least of us. We are only as strong as the least of us. We are only as loving as we are to the least of us.

Matthew 5:46-47; James 1:26-2:26; Hebrews 13:1-3

I've joined a biblically based community group on trauma. This should be easier to talk about with friends and family but it isn't. I've written a lot recently on the topic of anger and I mostly joined so that I could find trustworthy people to talk about anger with. People who understand that it has a purpose, isn't inherently sinful, and who aren't afraid of it. Having passed this test, I want these people to tell me how to get rid of it.

We have twelve weeks to get to that and wherever else the curriculum leads us. My suspicion is that the answers I want will make the fires burn hotter before they cool which is why I need people committed to healing and truth who can handle my rage. I cannot do this on my own. This cannot be a "just me and God" thing. I need other people who have sleeping dragons inside of them which sometimes wake and raze the town. And I know that abuse and trauma reliably produce anger so maybe my people are there. We are only on chapter two but I already thing that they are.

I wanted to write about how interesting the biblical and theological approach to abuse was in the book Mending the Soul, how I'm both encouraged and surprised at how thoroughly the author dresses down King David's family for the rape of Tamar. I wanted to complain about how slowly the work book moves. But after my reading this morning, I am humbled. I am finding the words that I have lacked. I am learning what it is my anger guards. See, the funny thing about anger is that it burns you too. But sometimes burning is better than shattering. When you burn, you are still whole, still know your name, still haven't surrendered to oblivion, still haven't given up.

So here it is. I am angry and I am confused. The way I grew up has made it difficult for me to understand and trust the voice and leading of God. And that is different than not having faith. It's faith without direction or clear purpose. We were often rendered powerless against abuse because it was "Satan at work" and we needed to wait for God to move and work and save us. Now, as I make choices I don't ever feel confident that I can discern God's will. I make choices using the best of my own wisdom and I hope that God is pleased. But I don't know God as the provider. I know God as the watcher, the tester of endurance, the one who lets terrible things happen and gives meaning to it later. Since moving out, I've had some additional traumas that have only obscured this more.

It's caused a rift in my spiritual practice. And it hurts so badly. I feel cutoff from the Body of Christ, isolated by my own powerlessness. When I make plans for the future, I feel paralyzed and unable to decide what is good and where God might be leading. And I am angry because I don't know what I did wrong or how to make this right, but still I ache and ache.

Here's to hoping that the glimmer of healing ahead doesn't fade.

A Few Guidelines

I think there must be something about my face that makes strangers want to give me unsolicited advice. Advice about the housing market, stocks, careers, marriage, children, how close to live to your parents, whether sun screen is killing us or saving us, and so on. Maybe it's the age I am. Maybe I remind these people of themselves when they were making these choices. Maybe they just go around telling everyone what to do with their lives.

Maybe it's my face.

Maybe I look like I am looking for something and straining to put the pieces together. Maybe I look like I need help. All of those things are probably true in different degrees.

To filter through all of this advice, I'm developing some guidelines or rules or clarifiers. The first is this: I do not take advice from people who have walked the path that they suggest and are still unhappy. If the path leads only to money or ambition or some kind of success that does not include the health of their person and their family, it's not where I want to go. There are a lot of unhappy people giving out advice trying to prove that they've succeeded despite how they feel. And maybe they have. But it's not where I want to be.

The second guideline is to avoid the advice of those who do not ask questions. If they were concerned about my well-being, they would ask. And I have learned not to trust the advice of those who are giving it for their own well-being only.

I think there will be more, but this is what I've decided so far.

These past few years I have burned and burned but have not been consumed. I have asked God for release but He tells me to listen, to sit with my anger for as long as it will sit with me.

I have been afraid to listen to anger, have hesitated to accept it, and struggled to love the parts of myself that burn and burn. But I slowly I am seeing why the metaphor of fire is never far from anger. No two things in my life have shown me how closely life and death are knit together, destruction and renewal.

So I choose anger. Everyday. I choose it again and again. But not as a thing which I love and hold tightly to. Instead, I choose not to ignore or banish it. I choose to lock eyes with its lynx like face, to sit in silence hoping it passes but doing nothing to chase it away, to observe as much as I can about its presence.

In this way, I have learned that the first two purposes of anger are to say “you have been well and truly wronged. This should not have happened but has.” And again to repeat “you are hurt more than you know. Your mind and spirit have been torn apart. You must stop, rest, protect what is left of yourself.” 

 

Of all the things that have soothed the pain that my anger guards, I did not expect poetry to top the list. But there is nothing so calming as finding that someone else can name the flames in your fire, someone else has fallen off of the mountain top of their innocence with only questions to break their fall, someone else is guarding a pain that is healing at glacial speed. And that someone is still out there fighting. When I find a poem that resonates, I can hear the coals of my heart hiss with the relief of water. See, I don’t want to be angry. But even more than that, I don’t want to hurt anymore. And I know my anger is protecting me until I’m ready to fight again.

 

Some kinds of pain can’t be healed in isolation because isolation was the tool they used to hurt you in the first place. But a poem can build a bridge and send just a little rain. Even though the poet is describing their personal hell, it’s also a rebellious love letter to all the warriors out there still fighting. We exist. We fight today and we’ll heal soon. Because we haven’t given up yet. And it is our anger that guards against despair. With psalms and poems we will heal. Some days, I don't know if I will ever wake up truly without my anger, but I'm learning not to be afraid. And as I learn, I worry less about getting rid of my anger and more about listening to it until it has nothing more to say.

I'm getting my first cord in capoeira this weekend. This is a big deal because I'm not good at capoeira. I live in my head. My body is only dimly related to who I am and where my identity lies. My body and I don't have a great relationship since it's been used to misclassify, underestimate, limit, and otherwise box away who I am and what I'm capable of all of my life. I've largely disassociated from it even though I know none of this is my body's fault.

It's complicated. I don't want a different body. I want this body to be allowed to mean something else, to communicate a different message than whatever people have been receiving. Over the years, I've tried to ignore the things that I cannot change meanwhile taking up less and less space.The end result is that I'm not very good at anything that requires me to communicate with my body. We don't have practice being on the same team, telling each other what we can do and will do.

But in the roda, I take up space. In practice, I move and they are huge sweeping movements. Cartwheels, kicks, escapes. I'm still not any good at it. I don't learn things nearly as quickly as the other beginners, I have a harder time remembering what I've learned, and confidence is a herculean effort. But I show up and I try my best to laugh through my frustration until it finally clicks. And the group is one of the most encouraging groups of people I've ever met. That makes being bad at everything easier.

I'm not joking when I say I'm bad at everything. I know I test the patience and creativity of the people who teach me. I'm a terrible musician who doesn't know how to live in my own body. I need to overcome that if I'm ever going to be a good capoeirista. Participating these last two years has been one of the most difficult things I've ever done.

I'm a recovering perfectionist though I'll deny it if you ever ask me. I don't know how or why people become perfectionists by my own experience often leaves me feeling like I don't have anything in common with other perfectionists. Except that I don't do things that I'm not good at. I don't start projects that I don't have confidence I'll be able to finish. And especially not when anyone is watching. Growing up, I knew that my mom conferenced with my teachers to see if anyone could tell if I'd been affected by the divorce, the remarriage, the health issues etc. That added an extra layer of pressure to making sure I never failed at anything in school. At some point, the anxiety that someone would find out that I wasn't fine just became anxiety about failing or trying new things or performing or not being enough. I've been terrified of being found "not capable" all of my life. Consequently, I'm typically a fast learner with two tiny Achilles heals: anything with music and anything that makes me use my body. Those are also the core skills which capoeira requires and builds.

But my capoeira group consistently affirms the effort that goes in regardless of the results. They watch for and celebrate the tiniest improvements. I'll not be expected to perform songs anytime soon, but they remind that someday I should try it even though they know how bad I am at it. They've let me be terrible at a thing for years now. They've let me learn slower than I've ever learned anything in my life. And I've never had that before. I've never had the freedom to do something badly for as long as I want. I've never had the safety of learning clumsily, gracelessly, slowly. It's such a gift.

It's only recently that I've been learning with any skill the balancing act of empathizing with people without losing myself in them. To feel what they feel but to still feel my own emotions too. To do this without apology for what I feel or anger for being swept up (sometimes forcefully) in what someone else is feeling.

No one "makes me" feel anything. But often my habit of empathy creates the expectation of empathy. Friends and coworkers sometimes seek me out to make themselves feel understood even if I can't do anything else for them. Sometimes this isn't good for me. Sometimes I've been feeling too much for too long. Sometimes I lose myself and I forget that their depression, anger, resentment, frustration, and loneliness is not mine, is not me. Sometimes I've been feeling enough of my own negative emotions and I don't have the bandwidth for more.

I feel guilty when I reach the end of what I can give. And sometimes I feel angry when I feel used for my empathy. But I'm learning to sail these seas without taking them all into my boat. And I think that's the most accurate metaphor I know. Some days, I sail the seas. Other days, I fill my boat with ocean water. But knowing the difference, feeling the difference, upholding the difference--all of these things are good steps to be making.

The message that I've been getting is that I ask for too much at all the wrong times. The question has become -or maybe always was- whether I can make do without some of the things I need like communication, openness, and honesty. While I know that no amount of love can make someone heal for you, it would mean so much if they tried.

There are friends though who have become family. They are the ones who were able to meet me halfway saying "I'll try if you try." And again, "I promise not to bring any weapon home but the truth." Without these, I would be estranged from humanity.