I am not well.

And that means that I have lied to a lot of people this week. Or maybe just few. Truthfully, I'm not keeping track. Truthfully, I can't go into the specifics with everyone who asks. And it isn't fair to ask without investment. But I digress.

It's not like I know what kind of unwell I am anyway. I just don't feel like myself, don't know if I can access all of the parts of my brain, and don't know when it got so difficult to be in my skin. But it is hard to be in my skin. My thoughts and my bones running up against limitations.

All of my internal resources seem much more finite than I remember. Creativity, emotions, energy, focus, problem solving, resiliency. And I know that I haven't suffered much so I don't know where these limitations have come from.

I am not a very strong person. But I am good at rebuilding.

And sometimes people mistake that for strength.

But I tear so easily.

I am not a very strong person. But I am really quick to remake what has been destroyed.

A week. A day. An hour. I don't need much.

But I crumble frequently.

I am not a very strong person. Believe me when I say this.

And this week has been one for the books. My insides are just dust blowing through the doors and windows of my heart and mind. And then I pull myself together long enough to communicate. Just long enough to try to make sense.

But I am not a very strong person so it doesn't last long.

And I don't know how there are humans whose whole lives are marked by an injustice that I barely understand, who still love and fight for the good in this world.

I am not a very strong person. But I know some very strong people.

I'm in a bad mood today. More accurately this week.

When things get tough at work, I always feel trapped. I spend so much time working and yet it's the main source of my stress and self-doubt. Does my self-doubt come from or feed the doubt I receive from others? Which is the chicken and which is the egg?

Lately, when I look for a way out or a way through, I don't like what I see. And I wonder, Is this all there is? All there ever will be? Always trying to prove that I can do the job, solve the problem, and disagree without being less.

And that's I guess all I want to say today.

I am not less.

I am not less logical for my emotions.

I am not less committed for choosing another path.

I am not less intelligent for finding a different solution.

I am not less strong for preferring to spend my energy in other ways. 

I am not less. I am not less.

I am not less.

And neither are you.

You are not less for my capabilities, the times when I am right.

Neither of us are less for our disagreements.

We don't have to compete.

We are more for the conflicts that we work through.

We are more for the humility that community requires.

We are more when we admit our mistakes.

We are more.

We are enough.

the hard season
will
split you through.
do not worry.
you will bleed water.
do not worry.
this is grief.
your face will fall out and down your skin
and there will be scorching. 
but do not worry. 
keep speaking the years from their hiding places. 
keep coughing up smoke from all of the deaths you 
have died. 
keep the rage tender.
because the soft season will come.
it will come.
loud.
ready.
gulping.
both hands in your chest.
up all night.
up all of the nights.
to drink all damage into love.

--therapy by Nayyirah Waheed

What do I want to say but this? This and only this. This a thousand times until I stop hanging on every single word. Until my heart lets me move on. Until the burning quiets. Will it ever quiet? My anger applauds and my grief relaxes when I read this poem. I am not alone. And it's then that I know for sure that all that my anger wants is to be understood. But this is not a world that understands anger. This is a world that fears anger and shames the angry.

As I do this trauma work, I am learning that my anger is here to protect me, to guard that part of your mind that is so adaptable that it accepts trauma and abuse as normal as a means of survival. Anger is the tether that can bring you back to yourself after you've given everything valuable away just to stay alive or stay loved. When it is functioning properly, anger is healthy and necessary.

But I cannot expect anyone to understand because they have to reconcile with their trauma, grief, and anger in their own way. Most people will wait until their lives are falling apart to even start the work. Most people will blame you for being angry instead of seeing your hurt. Which means it is up to me to understand my anger. There will be precious little help from the outside. If my anger wants to keep me safe, but I haven't done the work with my trauma to understand what it is trying to keep me safe from, my anger will live and boil just beneath the surface no matter how much I forgive or try to ignore it. I've been sitting with it for at least a year, but I still struggle to accept my anger for what it is and to let it live inside of me. But the more I ignore or reject it, the harder it is to tell when a real emergency is happening and when it's just the past clouding my vision.

To reach my goal, I have to be friends with my anger. I need to be able to know when it is new anger and when it is old anger. Otherwise, I'll never know when I am safe and when I need to fight. And believe me, there are still plenty of fights worth starting or joining in this world under a curse. But I cannot fight all of the injustice in this world with the rage of a hurricane. There are days when I want to. But that will only burn me out. And all of these worthy causes need compassionate people in it for the long haul. People who are soft even though the world rewards hardness.

Lastly, as I've done this work with my trauma and my anger, I have begun to see the marks of anger on other people. How a coworker's difficult attitude is just a mask for the rage that they don't know what to do with from pain they haven't finished listening to. It makes it easier to not take these things personally and to find a way to encourage them without being engulfed in their flames. But I wouldn't have known what I was looking at if I hadn't spent time with my own anger, listening and listening, waiting and waiting. Understanding blooms slowly. Even after you find the words for what you think is growing inside of you, the roots and the flowers take their time. But with each new lesson from my anger, I look forward to a soft season coming nearer. Keep the rage tender, don't harden against it.

This week, I have been doing more work on abuse and the effects that I find in myself. It's helping with my anger by showing me what it guards.

I am the oldest daughter of an abusive family. Not the kind of abuse that is brutal or forceful but the kind professionals call "narcissistic" in which the needs of individual family members are minimized or neglected to protect family members or habits or a status quo that is not healthy. Not the lightning strike or earthquake but the steady erosion of ground beneath your feet. 

I became the first line of defense, offense, whatever was needed. Our parents had already partially failed by the time I took on the mantel of being the stop-gap, plan B, the soldier who never gave up because all I had to lose was loss itself.

I am the oldest daughter and I learned to volunteer to go without or go to war as a means of controlling my environment. If you volunteer, you feel like you have more agency or identity or will than if they rip it from you. 

And I am nothing without my will to survive. 

Oldest daughter. Older sister. The first to gain her voice is not necessarily the first to be attacked. And nothing will make you yell like love. 

And I am nothing without my love for my sisters.

I volunteered. To need less, to fight, to heal those who cannot heal themselves. But no one told me that no one can control the trajectory of their gifts. People will do what they like with your iron-willed effort, your carefully given love, your dutifully surrendered gifts. There are no rules that dictate the use and administration of such sacrifices even if it leaves you gasping

I am nothing...
I am nothing...
What was it all for?

If it wasn't for healing, then it was for love. If it wasn't for love, then it was for hope. If it wasn't for hope, then it was for the next best thing. 

And what is that?

I am still looking for the answer. But I'll give it to you when I find it. Because the world is full of takers and I am trying my very best not to be one of them. 

Oldest daughter. Older sister. The biggest of the small warriors. I did what I could. I gave what I had. Now they want me to bury me weapons and wipe away my scars. 

"Drink from the cup of forgiveness." They say.

But I need a drenching not a cup. A long soak in the pool of Siloam. There are so many to forgive. I think of them when the sun rises. And, when the sun sets, I think of myself and how it still hurts to try to name the ways I gave too much to mouths that chose hunger and too much to wounds that chose blood. And yet I also never had enough. I think of how I didn't know any better and in so many ways, I still don't. Who will forgive me?

I am nothing without my will, my love, and my mistakes. 

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.