The Frustrating Beauty of Relationships

If, like me, you've ever experienced what it's like to truly click with someone, you understand what I mean when I say it is both a beautiful and frustrating experience. To those who have never experienced this, what I just described makes absolutely no sense. So, for any who are not completely sure what I mean, allow me to explain.

There are these wonderfully rare moments in life where you meet someone with whom you can just connect. The connection is strong and seemingly illogical. Or at least, it looks that way in light of a society that tells us people must earn our trust and prove they are worth having in our life before we keep them around. But these sorts of friendships are different. They blossom out of seeming nothingness. They reach a level of mutual trust and depth that would normally take months or even years, depending on the person, to develop. Instead they form in only a fraction of the time. I'm talking a matter of days or weeks.
I find these sorts of friendships to be the purest sorts of friendships, for they form out of trust and understanding when, logically, there is no reason to offer either. But since when was love logical?

Isn't that, though, what makes friendship one of the most beautiful and mysterious things about human existence? For life is a journey, and when we form any sort of relationship with someone, we allow our life paths to coincide for a season, if not longer.
But just as you can't rush through any other part of your life journey--the ups and downs, the joys and struggles, the love and loss--you can't rush through a relationship. When we forget this simple truth is when the frustration I spoke of sets in.
There is actually a word for it, according to the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Its adronitis, which they describe as the "frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone."

I had been feeling this very frustration for several weeks before I discovered this definition in one of the many times I was wasting time on Facebook rather than doing something productive. And it got me thinking. Why does this frustration even exist?
Before I even had time to think in depth on the question, a thought popped in my head, "It's because you're so close."

And really, that's exactly it. Like I said, most friendships take a while to form depth, only very rarely do you meet someone you can have such a strong connection with instantly. We usually have to wait months to reach a point where we feel comfortable like that with someone, in that time we've lived life together and grown in the slow deliberate way that life paths frequently like to take. But when one of these rare friendships comes about, we forget that we've only known the other person for a short period of time, despite how comfortable we feel with them. We forget that just because we trust the other on this level that would normally take longer to reach, doesn't mean we have walked through the life with them we normally would have to walk through to reach that level of trust.
If you've ever heard someone say something along the lines of, "I feel like we've known each other forever, but also like it hasn't been that long at all," then they are probably talking about one of these beautifully frustrating friendships.

In my time thinking about these friendships, and just friendships in general, I began marveling at their beauty more than ever. For the very fact that each and every one of us longs for companionship shows our Maker's mark more than anything else I can think of. This desire to not only be loved, but to love others in return is one of the many beautiful ways our relational Creator made us in His image. After all, He made someone else for Adam, not because He wasn't enough for Adam, but because Adam needed a place to pour out all the love the Father was pouring into him.
And it is in these rare, unquestioning, deep friendships that pop up out of seemingly nowhere that I see God the most. For just like with those friends we're close to, but don't quite yet know fully, when we first delve into a relationship with He who made us, this trust  and understanding comes quickly, but full knowledge of His nature and character takes a life time to grasp.

Maybe we should learn a thing or two from this picture. Maybe this deep trust and slow learning was the way He intended it. Maybe we should learn to be more forgiving and nonjudgmental in our relationships, then patiently walk through life together.

The Devil's Favorite Tool

"Just because it scares us or we don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't real."
This seems a little obvious. I mean, you may be scared of outer space, rottweilers , or taxes, but no matter how much you do not understand or are scared of these things, they are still there and no amount of pretending they aren't will make you not run into them or something regarding them from time to time. Obvious, right?
So, so then, how come we live much of the rest of our lives this way in regards to truth and beauty?

That quote is a line that stood out among all other profound thoughts expressed in my Partner in Crime's newest blog post, entitled The Ache of Beauty. In it she describes how we all experience this longing when it comes to beauty, because we were designed for ultimate beauty. But this longing scares us because we cannot understand it, so we put up walls around our hearts and hide, just like we do with many other things that scare us and threaten our minimal understanding of things.

I have talked a lot about walls over the last couple months. I've talked about how we build walls and masks around ourselves to hide who we really are, why we do these things, and how we should tear town these barriers so we can embrace who we are meant to be. I have talked about beauty and how we are scared to show our beauty to others for fear of being judged. But something I didn't realize until now was it's not just our own beauty we put a mask over but beauty in general. As Miss McCall said in her post, we turn away from beauty and put walls around our hearts so as not to feel the ache.
How many times have you read in the Bible that someone "hardened their heart" and wondered what it looked like? I think it looks a lot like this. Because the ache stems from a longing for more, a longing that we have to leave our comfortable places to pursue. And we, as humans, are oh so scared of leaving the known and the comfortable for the unknown and potentially uncomfortable. We are scared that our actions would not be worth it and that we will make a disastrous mess and fools of ourselves. We are scared because we have bought into the lie that we cannot walk on water. I mean, surely I can't be the only one who has a hard time believing that story sometimes.

But the devil works on this fear. We think he's been getting more and more creative with how he personally attacks us and tears us down, but his tactics haven't changed. Since the beginning of time, his methods have always been fear and lies, fear and lies. So why do so many people seem much more hopeless, lost, and longing for more than ever before?
It's because in the busy, who has time to seek truth?  And who would want to, really? I mean, truth disrupts our busy lives with our meetings, soccer practices, dinners, and even relaxation time planned to a T. You don't even have to look at a working adult to see this. Look at a grade schooler. From school to piano lessons to baseball games to play dates, it's no wonder kids are more stressed than ever and more and more people are growing up to never know how to appreciate beauty at all.

Jesus said we must become like a child to be able to enter His Kingdom. But with kids being scheduled more and more like adults, where has the wonder and inspiration gone? We are being introduced at younger and younger ages to lie that says you aren't important unless you are doing everything. Lies that tell us that the truth is a lie.

But this isn't the first time the devil has used our fear of the unknown to keep us from pursuing beauty and instead keep us pursuing things much less worth our hearts and souls.
In Exodus 5, Moses follows God's leading and goes to Pharaoh to ask if the Israelites can go into the desert to worship God for three days. In response to Moses' request, Pharaoh orders the slave drivers to make the work harder for the Isrealites so that "they keep working and pay no attention to lies." In the same way, our society has told us that busy is better. "Pay no attention to the truth," it says. "You must work, work, work so you can be the best."

With so many people saying this and living this way all around, it is very easy for us to slip into the same rhythm and have trouble believing truth and seeing beauty altogether.

But we must not let our fear of the unknown and the judgement of others keep us from living the lives full of wonder and beauty that we were designed to live. We must start a revolution and start breaking free from the molds we've been put in.
I challenge each of you personally to slow down and embrace beauty when you see it. Let it make your mind run wild, even if that takes you into parts of yourself you haven't explored in a while. Let yourself dream again, but don't stop there. Pursue the dreams and longing for a deeper meaning of Beauty, Love, and Truth that can only be found in the One we cannot fully comprehend.

Sticks and Stones

If you've been reading my blog from the beginning, or even just a few once in a while, you've probably heard me talk about a writer's conference called Re:Write and how things I learned there and the people I met changed me so much for the better. Well, what I haven't mentioned in my blog is the steps that came before that. The things that lead me to the huge weekend of self discovery that happened to me at this conference. Part of why I never mentioned these things is because until recently I wasn't even sure what started this chain reaction. It's hard sometimes, even once you've reached the end of a road, to look back and see the journey. The road snakes back on itself, sometimes parts of it are hidden. But sometimes it's good to revisit parts of your journey just so you can see how far you've come and learn new things from old situations.

Now, I'm not saying you should revisit everything, because there are certainly things that should remain only in the past, but there are still some things that you may appreciate more or learn more from now than you did when you first discovered them.

A few weeks before Re:Write, my sister shared a very impacting spoken word video on facebook.

I'm not sure if this began the domino effect of seeking myself and God in a deeper way, but I do .know it was an important domino somewhere in the chain. Emotional after watching the video and truly appreciating the idea that I recently realized would later evolve into the quote I shared in my last post about beauty, I decided to bare my soul to my large group of friends and acquaintances on facebook.

So, without further explanation, here is the video and the post that followed:

Growing up I was called obsessive, freak, crazy. Why? Because I was passionate and my mind moved a million miles a minute, causing me to have difficulty expressing myself and things that I loved in a "normal" way. Because of these names, I felt less than normal. At first that was okay. I retreated into my book, my fantasies, and my mind because I didn't even really understand myself.

Seventh and eight grade I saw people had friends, people shared what they were interested in and found people with common ground. I had been quiet and to myself for so long, I forgot. I forgot the labels they had given me. I spoke up. But still, I didn't understand me, not even to share who I was easily. So it came out in messy bursts of extreme emotions: excitement, anxiety, and passion. These things aren't normal. Or at least they aren't in middle school, where if you aren't painted in shades of the same boring gray as everyone else, you're abnormal.

Freak and crazy, some called me. But these didn't bother me as much as obsessed. I love words, I always have. And as a thirteen year old, I looked up the definition. "To think about something unceasingly or persistently; to dominate or preoccupy the thoughts or haunt persistently or abnormally"

There was that word again. Abnormal. So who was I then? I didn't belong to any bigger puzzle. I was not a masterpiece. I was abnormal. Broken. A discarded extra piece that didn't make sense.

Wanting to be loved and understood desperately, I put on a mask of shades of gray, hoping it would hide my crazy. But I found that I still couldn't relate to people, because I wasn't giving them me.I shut down emotionally to avoid the pain that came with the severe isolation I felt. I was lost in in a sea on shades of gray. I needed help. I was crying out for acceptance, but my mask had become so good at hiding who I was, that those around me couldn't even see I was in pain. Finally, through much pain, I threw the mask away, and exposed the deep emotional wound to the harsh air. Grace and love pored in. For the first time I had hope.

I was sixteen.

Since then, I've come to learn more about myself and how my mind works. It's a mess, and it doesn't make sense to even me sometimes, but I have found a way to harness that mess and turn it into something beautiful. I am writing a book. I do what some still call obsessive research and reading so I can improve my skills as much as possible. I'm still excessively loud, overly passionate, and into some things that aren't classified as "normal."

Although I'm not called these names that frequently any more, to this day, they still make me flinch. The way I thought no one understood me, or really saw who I was for so long affects how I think about my relationships. It still makes me second guess the genuineness of some of my friendships from time to time. I have to remind myself that those lies I once believed are not true.

What were your names?

I wrote this post six months ago. No longer do I flinch at these names. But watching this video and reading six months ago me's thoughts, I understand a little more about what I've been learning about myself, God, and beauty now.
After rewatching that video for the first time in six months, I was hit especially hard when the speaker said the line, "She's raising two kids whose definition of beauty begins with the word Mom."
And yet she still doesn't see her beauty because of the names she was called and the masks she wore to hide her pain. How many of us does this describe?
From the twenty years of life I've lived, it looks like too many. More than it should be, anyway.
I was one of these, I tried to cover myself up, because the names they called hurt too much and I couldn't bare to let the people see that my heart was nothing more than an unwanted flower trampled in the street.

And when I think about where I was, and where I still see people today, I can't help but identify with the last line of this poem, "Our lives will only ever always continue to be a balancing act that has less to do with pain and more to do with beauty," because if you think about it, that's what we were and are doing, isn't it?
We put on masks to draw attention away from the pain in our eyes at the cruel words spoken. We put make up on our scars and build walls around our hearts, because if someone saw our stories, lives, beauty, then maybe they would disapprove and call us names to make themselves feel less broken.

For isn't that all they are? The same as us. Broken souls in a never ending struggle with beauty.

So, just as I asked six months ago, what were the jabs made at your beauty?
What were your names?

The Language Of the Soul

Not so long ago, maybe a month or so, a few of my fellow fiction writers made a proposition to me. It went something like this, "Hey! We're going to start role playing characters from our books so we can get to know them better. Want to join?"


My head basically exploded.

Whether you know me or not, you probably don't know about my role playing addiction unless you were one of my role play partners in the past. But it really is no less than an addiction. So when I was invited to join them on this, excitement immediately filled me. I had a hard time containing it.
I knew the purpose of the sequence we were creating was to get to know characters better that we don't know very well, but I chose my most familiar character even though the character in my current work in progress could really use a lot of developing.
"Why?" might be your first question asked.
Well, it's because like role play, which I hadn't participated in in over a year, it had also been some time since I had written fantasy.
Fantasy's my jam. Fantasy's my passion. I eat, sleep, and breathe fantasy!
So even just the two short months I've spent writing something outside the genre has been killer for me.
So choosing Behmyn seemed like a no-brainer.

Now let me give you a little background on Behmyn before I get to want I really want to talk about.
Behmyn is a thinker. Behmyn is deep. He is broken. He has experienced many hurts in his past and has a poor tendency to blame himself for things he couldn't really have helped or stopped. But he is also loyal and protective. He tried to protect himself from getting hurt again, but he loves people too much to distance himself from them completely. He also loves animals and being outdoors. He is a hunter. He is also going blind.
Behmyn has been in my head for upwards end of seven years. First he was forming slowly. He didn't have a name, he didn't really have a form, but he was there. Then in September of 2010, I breathed him to life. He started as a character I role played online. After three and a half years really forming him into what he is now, I stopped role playing and moved him to a story I was writing. A trilogy. The first book of which is in my editor's hands.

All that being said, I didn't expect to learn anything from or about Behmyn in this little game we'd come up with. I would tell people we were doing it so they could get to know their characters better, except for me, because I was just doing it for fun.
Then he surprised me several nights ago with a speech about beauty.
Behmyn, like I, believes beauty is everywhere. In all honesty, I'm not entirely sure who believed it first. I'd like to say it was him, but maybe it was there in me, just buried where I couldn't see it until he brought it out. But through experimenting with a character who loves beauty, but can no longer see, I learned so much more about what beauty is and isn't than I ever did before Behmyn happened.
His view on beauty is the very core of his being. Without it, he does not exist, yet in all my years getting to know him, I have never viewed his passion in such a raw sense as he did in this speech.

He was talking with a young woman who was very deeply effected by the rules and standards of her society. A society that put people down and tried to keep them from feeling like they could express who they really are. After a while, she shared with him that she had never heard someone speak so openly about their inner thoughts before. She said that she, along with many others, were taught that beauty is dangerous and must be hidden at all costs.

Behmyn, and I along with him, ached deep within our souls. Because even though this was a fictitious event my friend and I were typing out, her character's words deeply reflected our own society.
We have taught young people in your society that beauty is not who you are. Who you are is scary, weird, or probably unlikable in some way, so you should hide yourself behind a pretty painted mask rather than showing your true heart and soul to people. It is something I notice every day. I have coworkers who are compulsive liars, making up stuff about their lives to try to make themselves seem, cooler, funnier, more interesting, etc. I hear people complain about them constantly, "And she told you this? You know she lies about everything, right?"
But while they see an attention whore, I see a broken spirit who's bought into the lies this society has fed them. Someone desperately wanting to be loved and accepted, but terrified that who they really are isn't good enough for acceptance.

So, when Behmyn, distressed over hearing people being taught to live like this, began his speech, it resonated deep with me, as with the rest of my friends.
The first thing he said was, "You can't hide beauty without damaging that which holds the beauty."
When I typed that sentence, I didn't even think about it. It just made so much sense. It perfectly described his distress over the situation and his inner passion about beauty. But in my time thinking about it since, I realize just how true his words are.

I mean think about it. Those people taught to hide themselves, the inner beauty of their hearts and souls, behind a mask soon become so damaged by the fear that comes with putting that mask on that they don't even really know who they are anymore. All they have is the mask, tied on by fear. Fear that someone will notice they're hiding. Fear that if their mask is disliked even after all their effort, that they could never love the person beneath the mask. Fear even when people approve of the mask, for the person underneath knows that the mask is a lie.
Pretty soon, even if they wanted to take off the mask, they couldn't. For unreasonable fear has replaced any desire of showing who they really are and crushed any hope of acceptance.

You see, beauty is not skin deep. I am deeply sad for whoever said so.
Beauty isn't something you see with your eyes or understand with your mind, but you feel with your soul. It is everywhere.
It's not just what you can see, but it can be heard and felt. For even with people like the one I just described, I can see glimpses of their beauty shining through the mask. I can see flashes of their passion, joy, humor, and heart. It's in their eyes, it's in their subtle doubts and fears that they don't know I've noticed. There is beauty even in their brokenness. Because out of their brokenness I see one thing, a soul longing to be seen, really seen, and loved deeply. And that is beautiful.

So like I said, I don't know who saw it first, but beauty is something I will always fight for. And hopefully in my own exploration of beauty through Behmyn's story and my own life, I will help others to learn this wonderful language of the soul called Beauty.




Note: I have been praying through Behmyn's story that it will touch those who read it in a special way. That they won't be the same after reading it. But before it can get into the hands of those who are meant to read it, it must be published. Like I said in my post, my manuscript is in the hands of my editor right now. 
But now I would like your prayers and support as I continue on this road of trying to get published. If you could pray for God's hand of guidance on this project and His perfect peace and insight on my current WIP, that would mean a lot to me.