i don’t know (but i do know what i need to know)

Something I’ve been thinking about:

I don’t really know who I am. I don’t really know myself–the deepest parts of me, the “twillight zone”, as I suppose Nouwen would call it, is as much a mystery to me as it is to other people. I think this is how Nouwen puts it:

“There is a twilight zone in our hearts that we ourselves cannot see. Even when we know quite a lot about ourselves-our gifts and weaknesses, our ambitions and aspirations, our motives and our drives-large parts of ourselves remain in the shadow of consciousness. This is a very good thing. We will always remain partially hidden to ourselves.”

And this is true of me. I can feel it. Perhaps this phase of my life can be characterized by a deeper understanding of my lack of understanding. My lack of self-awareness. I don’t really know who I am. But I think, if I can be so bold as to say it, that that is not the important thing. The important thing is that I know who I want to become.

I want to be a person who listens. I want to be the kind of person who lives in a way that invites people to share their story with me. I want to be the kind of person others feel they can go to and receive not condemnation but acceptance, not a diagnosis but a listener, not a false sense of everything-will-be-okay but a genuine sense of hope rooted in the character of Christ. I want to be the kind of person whose friends know that they are deeply loved and deeply cared about, no matter who they are or what they’ve done. I want to be the kind of person who serves instinctively, who understands that “words spoken in deep love or deep hate set things in motion within the human heart that can never be reversed.” I want to be someone who speaks words of life, who prays (com)passionately for her friends, who withholds from anger and jealousy as much as humanly possible. I want to be someone whose lifestyle encourages other people–not in its flawless ability to imitate Christ, but in its genuine attempt to love and live like Him even when failing again and again and again.

You see, I’ll be honest with you: I wish I knew who I was a little bit better. I feel like a stranger living in a foreign soul. I feel like life would be just a little easier if my twilight zone was a little less twilight. But I’m reminded that I have to be patient, keep trusting in God. Another one by Nouwen:

“A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.”

Knowing who I am is not the most important thing. Who I am is constantly changing, growing, molding and deepening. Who I want to be–now that is something I can root myself in. I want to be like Jesus. I’ll keep looking at and to Him in the hopes that the clay will begin to reflect the potter. It’s all I can really do. I am a mystery unto myself. But that’s okay. Like Bonhoeffer said, “Whoever I am, Thou knowest O God, I am Thine.” And I am reminded constantly that I am safe because Somebody else knows me. Sees me. And loves me.

Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine.

“to be a light in the darkest night…”

Sometimes it seems as if all my efforts are meaningless. Pointless. As if all I have achieved is the pouring out of my own energy and hope. A few weeks ago, I gave a friend a stack of note cards filled with prayers I’d written out for her over the past year of high school. Words from my heart, words that I’ve racked my brain and soul trying to think of and write painstakingly down so that they would mean something to her. This friend has not mentioned the gift once, has not even acknowledged that she read a single sentence of a single note card.

And it hurts. I can tell you that it hurts a lot. It feels like a year-long, wasted effort that has achieved nothing but perhaps a good friend thinking I’m crazy. And it makes me angry. I would be lying if I did not admit that it makes me angry. It doesn’t make sense to me how you can receive any gift at all–but much more something like written prayers–and not even acknowledge that you opened it. It makes me unwilling to do something like this ever again.

And yet.

One of my closest friends in elementary school and junior high is going through an extremely difficult time. She was hospitalized a while ago without me knowing it, and has been suffering through significant emotional pain and depression. I’ve been haunted lately by imaginary phone calls telling me that she committed suicide. And in those moments of fear and panic, when I read a text message she wrote and feel my heart split apart, I realize that it doesn’t matter…that it has never mattered. If my other friend never acknowledges the prayers I gave her. If she never speaks of anything remotely spiritual to me. If no one in my life ever thanks me for something I’ve done for them. What is vastly more important is just that I do something. Just that I try. Because I see a world of devastating pain around me. And some of that pain, like my struggling friend, I have experienced before and know first-hand the anguish it can cause. And having been there, I feel this indescribably powerful yearning to bring any kind of hope that I can. So I will continue to do everything in my ability to help, continue to pray, continue to reach out, even if I myself am more broken than I can possibly convey. I don’t know if my efforts will make a difference, if they will ever be acknowledged. I don’t know how one shard of broken glass can help another shard find wholeness. I don’t know. But I will try. No matter what, I will try.

I can’t believe You’re still here (a weak prayer for a strong God)

Okay, Lord…

Praying is hard right now but let me try. Maybe writing the words down will help. Maybe. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for living as if this changes everything. Living as if You’ve abandoned me when perhaps my own shame made me want to abandon You. Because it always feels safer to be the one abandoning rather than the one abandoned. And I’m still not altogether convinced that You won’t abandon me. But… Somehow You’re still here. I can’t quite believe it but You are. And because of that, I’m trying to trust You. Trying to trust that You write better stories than I do, with much better endings that I can imagine. Trying to trust that You love Your characters more than I love my own. And that Your poems hold a lot more beauty and hope than mine do.

I promised You that I would go anywhere, do anything, walk any path You want as long as You go with me. And…and I still mean that. I have a lot of fear right now, a lot of loneliness and longing. But in the deepest place of my soul I think there is faith rather than doubt. Love rather than mistrust. Hope rather than despair. If I dig deep enough, I find You and not me. So I ask that You lead me, Lord. Guide my steps. I will walk this broken path if You are beside me and behind me and in front of me and at the end of me. I don’t have a lot of faith but I have a little and maybe that can be enough. Maybe You multiply faith the way you multiply fish and bread. Maybe it’s easier to show Your power to someone who knows that any strength is not of her own but can only come from You.

I think….this is good for now. It’s a good prayer to start with. I’m glad I can get some words out this time. Here are the last words I’ll say. They’re not my own. They’re from songs, but I know that’s okay with You. Sometimes the best words are borrowed. So here’s one of them, Lord:

He heals the brokenhearted,
He binds their wounds,
He is Love

He comforts the lonely
He hears their cry
He is Love

And here’s another one:

You’ve brought me to the wilderness where I will learn to sing
And You let me know my barrenness so I will learn to lean

And then there’s this last one, stirred from old memories and found with new meaning:

Teach me your ways oh Lord 
And I will walk in your truth 
Show me your paths oh Lord 
For I am devoted to you 
Purify my heart’s desire 
I long to be your servant 

Give me an undivided heart 
That I may fear your name 
Give me an undivided heart 
No other gods, No other love, 
No other gods before you

No other gods before You. Not the god of my fear, or the god of my desires, or the god of my loneliness… Just You. You’re the only God I need.

i’m just a child (sometimes i can’t be more)

I know I can write well. I know I write about heavy topics. Sometimes people say things about my writing that leave me uncomfortable in their generosity. But if I’m honest with myself, (not prideful but honest), I know that I can write well and that I think about things that perhaps other kids my age don’t. It’s my personality, I don’t know. But sometimes people talk to me or look at me in this way that makes me want to just drop to my knees and cover my head with my flailing arms and scream, “I’m just a child!” 

I’m just a child.

I still weep like a child sometimes; I was reminded of that this past week. I still ache like a child, deep in the bit of my stomach, a painful ache like a kid who has lost her home. I still tremble like a child, still need my daily feeding of hope like a child. Sometimes I write “profound” or “mature” things but other times–most times–I just want to beg you to realize how young I am… How sometimes I am still a little kid overwhelmed by the darkness around and within her. How sometimes I still need to be held and comforted. I feel this perpetual weight of people’s expectations–not so much that they demand I live at a certain level of maturity but that they just expect it because that’s what they see. They expect me to be mature and act older and to objectively examine my emotions. They expect me to struggle with integrity and faith and trust. They expect me to be able to rationally believe in what I know is true (God loves me, I have worth, He is strong enough) just because I can articulate that kind of truth well. But I can’t always do that… I don’t know if I’m making sense, saying what I want to say… Sometimes I feel so much pressure to struggle well and to suffer well and I don’t want to or know how to or have the strength anymore to… I am, honestly, just a kid, just a kid… I can’t always be all that you think I can. I am young. I only just finished high school. I’m just a kid dealing daily with an incredible amount of loneliness and heaviness and sometimes hopelessness and what I need is often so very different from what perhaps you may think.

I still need to be held sometimes. I still need to hear simple words like, “I love you” or “You’re going to be okay.” For all that I can write or speak or think deeply…please remember that I am young…I am frail…I am just a child.

abandoned (and several pounds lighter)

I had a friend some years ago who went to the same youth group as me. She was a couple years older and sort of like the older sister I never had. She was so good to me. One time she told me she had tried to kill herself a few times, and from that point on she ignored all attempts at communication between the two of us. I can’t even describe what it felt like to be told that kind of news by someone I loved and then be shut down by them. We haven’t had a conversation since that day, some four years ago. I don’t know where she is. I honestly don’t know if she’s alive.

I had another friend who would email me about her depression and eating disorder. We would talk and my friendship with her became one of the deepest I had. She got me through many painful nights in high school. Then she also just stopped talking to me and now she has ignored me so many times that I have long since given up. (Does anything hurt more than being ignored?) There was somebody else who confessed to me his ongoing depression, his suicidal desires, and then who ceased talking to me. I have another friend, my first real friend I ever made, who is currently struggling through a lot of pain and I wonder if she too will invest her darkest secrets in me and then shut me out.

Sometimes when people say things to me like, “You can talk to me; I’ll still love you”, I want to laugh. I have a history of people who invest terrible confessions in me, who listen to my own darkness, who say that they love me, and then turn and walk away and never come back. And they take parts of my own confessions with them, parts that I can never completely get back or ever completely give again. But clearly their love was a lie or they would not have abandoned me. Their love was a lie. Maybe yours is too. Maybe I should learn from my past mistakes.

What I really mean: the question of suffering

I recently finished reading through the book of Job in the Bible. It was a long journey. I had a difficult time getting through the 30+ chapters of Job complaining–although God knows I complain far longer than that–but I eventually did finish and took some time to reflect on the book. I think, if I’m being perfectly honest, the verse that stuck out to me the most was, “Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?” Job asks God why He let him suffer in a thousand different ways of asking, and God’s answer was that profound question, “Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?” For some reason, I remember reading that and laughing and then falling silent and thinking.

I don’t think God was trying to be funny. (Well, maybe He was…) I think God was asking Job that very seriously. I think, maybe, God was making a point; He was saying something like, “You’re asking me this question of suffering a thousand times over…but you don’t even understand what you’re asking. You can’t even fathom the depth or dimension of your own question.” God didn’t give Job an answer to his question; he helped him to question his own question.

What I came to understand through this book is this: We ask the question of suffering without understanding what we are really asking. We say aloud, “God, why did You let this happen? Why did yesterday’s tornado have to hit two elementary schools? What theological, rational reason for these tragedies can there possibly be?” But what we are really asking is, “If I throw all the weight of my doubts and horrors and despairs and questions at You–hurl them at You again and again–will You stand? Are you strong enough for even that? Can you be trusted?”

Lately I’ve realized that almost all the questions I ask have a deeper question that I’m really asking. I said earlier in a post that when I ask someone to pray for me I am really asking for them to show me I’m worth remembering. Similarly, I think when I ask God the question of suffering, I am really trying to assure myself that His character is strong enough and good enough to hold the worst parts of me. I’m not really asking about the Sandy Hooks; I’m asking about myself. I’m not accusing what looks to be God’s horrible actions on other people; I’m accusing His illogical goodness to me. Suffering is the force that turns my own, doubtful eye inward.

Why do we keep asking the same question of suffering over and over again? I don’t think it’s really because we expect an answer if we keep asking. I think it’s because each attempt at asking is another spadeful of dirt unearthing a tiny bit more of God’s character. It’s one more glimpse deeper into this mysterious God. The purpose of the asking is to see Him a little bit more clearly. But we get so caught up in the pursuit of an answer that we forget it was never really about the question in the first place. It was always about the One we were questioning. Not about our accusation but about the One we are accusing.

And He lets us. He lets us keep asking, I think, because He knows our real reason for asking. It is so hard to get us to seek Him directly…but in this way we are seeking Him without even knowing it. Each doubt is another step closer to Him. And so He lets us ask and take a step, ask and take a step, until eventually we exhaust our patience with our own asking and open our eyes and find ourselves already in His arms and discover that we have no more need for questions.

Really. Every time I realize how bad I am at being human, I realize how good God is at being God.

a poem (i don’t understand it either)

That which we hold as Truth…
That which we hold to be self-evident but never self-evaluate.
That which we cling to with webbed fingers and
imagine will retain its shape amidst our clenching.
All we know of ourselves beyond yesterday’s shadow is but another shadow,
and we try…we try…but what do we really know? Only that–

we are made of dust, and our greatest moments crumble with a
breath of wind.
We are fragmented souls, with staples in our hearts, with
helicopter wings for dreams and swift-footed miseries.
We are sinking sailboats, with failures for a breeze, and
oceans of unraveling to sail through.
Mysteries, filled with memories, and poorly handled metonymy–
questions for the starving mind but only more to do.
Ask anyone, they will tell you the same:
there is no going back, only going on, only going through.