The Pain Of Christmas

I'm going to say up front here that this isn't going to be my typical style of blog post. If you follow my blog even a little bit, you know what my style tends to be--the use of story and metaphor, both personal experience and otherwise, to draw out greater truth that I use in my daily life and hopefully you can as well.
This, however, may stray from that typical style. But regardless, I feel it is something that should be addressed.

Christmas is tomorrow and I realize that there are many of us who have gotten terrible news this holiday season that has left a bad taste in our mouths. Maybe it was a loss of a loved one or the news that you have cancer or the loss of a job you really needed. Whatever it may be, Christmas just isn't the same for you. But for many of us, the thing that ruined Christmas didn't even happen this year or last year, but many years ago. You lost someone that made Christmas Christmas, and with them gone, the holiday no longer carries the joy it used to.

I've lost people too. Believe me, I know what it's like. That being said, there's not much of anything that can lessen the pain right now except time. But I do believe that prayer, love, and support can help as well. So, even though I probably don't know you, I would like to pray for those of you grieving a loss this Christmas season. I pray that you find peace and comfort in the reminder of what this season is about. For it's not about lavish gifts, shopping trips, colored paper, and bright lights. It's not about food, time off from work, or tradition. Don't get me wrong, all these things are fine, and even uplifting when taken in the right heart, but they are not what Christmas is about. Christmas is about God giving up His standing as the most powerful being in the universe to take on our skin, our lives, and our suffering--to become completely helpless in the form of a newborn child. He gave up all He had to learn our language, experience our struggles, and feel our pain so that we could fully relate with Him not just as eternal souls but also as human beings, and so He could teach us how to live the way the Father made us to live.
But mostly He came so that he could defeat death once and for all. So that even though we may die here on earth, we will not remain that way, but join Him in the life we were always destined for.

I pray that you remember this as the pain of lost loved ones hits you with yet another wave of grief. I pray that though it may not make it hurt any less right now, that you will never forget that your Heavenly Father knows exactly what it feels like to lose someone dear to Him, for His Son died once too.

When Storms Come Raging

After a long day of teaching, Jesus and His disciples get in a boat to set out across the Sea of Galilee. On their journey across, Jesus decides to take a little snooze in the stern of the boat. And all of a sudden, a powerful storm comes up, and the disciples are afraid. They're not afraid because they've never seen a storm before, for if you do any research on the Sea of Galilee, you'll find that its position in this basin, this valley, means it gets storms a lot. Being fishermen, who are used to making their living on these and other waters, this is definitely not the first storm they've faced. But this storm is more powerful than any they've seen before.
According to the fourth chapter of the gospel of Mark, the storm was so furious that the waves broke over the boat and swamped it. So, naturally, the disciples believed they were going to drown. They believed they were going to die. In their panic, they turn to Jesus, who is still sleeping, and they woke him to say, "Teacher, we are going to drown, we are going to die. Don't you care?"

Life is filled with storms that threaten to overtake. Storms that come in the form of illness, doubt, insecurity, and fear. This being life and us being human, we have seen our fair share of these storms just as the disciples had seen their fair share of storms. But again, like the disciples, our experience with surviving through the storms sometimes isn't enough. Because sometimes, life comes in with a doozy.
I'm sure you know the kind I'm talking about. The job lost during a time when money was something you desperately needed. The diagnosis that changes everything. The threat to the one thing you've identified with the most for most of your life. Whatever the storm may be, all the other storms pale in comparison.

It's during these storms that we react exactly as the disciples had, with questions of, "Don't you even care?" It's easy to react this way, even natural sometimes, when our world seems to be crashing down around us. After all, if Jesus is the great protector, shouldn't He keep us from heartaches and loss such as these?
But if there's one thing I've learned from the scripture, it's that some of the best things come from the worst circumstance. Just take a look at any of the stories from the Old or New Testament. Many people faced trials aplenty, having to leave their homes, families, jobs, and comforts behind to follow God to the promise He offered. I could give some examples, but I think Jon Jorgenson of The Anima Series did an amazing job in his spoken word poem called "The Wall."
So allow me to pass the torch to him for a moment:

Jesus never promised there wouldn't be pain, in fact He practically assured us that it would be difficult. "Pick up your cross and follow me," He said, and if I remember correctly, His path of the cross was not an easy one lined with flowers and tea parties in the sun with a herd of passing unicorns. His path was difficult, it was painful, and it lead Him even to death. But from it came the most glorious victory ever seen.
Do you think that victory would ever come to pass, or we would even know a thing about this man, if He had not decided to deny His own comfort to take the sometimes painful road to redemption?

So of course He cares, just as you care when you hear a loved one going through some sort of trial. Because He has been there Himself before. He knows what it's like and is more than willing to help you conquer the storms in your life. I know this because the story of the storm doesn't stop there.

While the men are freaking, sure they are going to die, Jesus calmly gets up and looks out over the wind and waves and He says, "Quiet! Be still!"
If you've ever read the same scripture at different points in your life and gotten something different from it each time because of your life circumstances are different and your perspective has changed, then you understand when I say that sometimes I look at passages and wonder if there's something more there than what I'm just seeing.
Since there's not a lot of context as to what the disciples were thinking and feeling during this moment, it's hard to tell for sure, but I think Jesus was speaking to more than just the wind and waves on that stormy afternoon. I think He was speaking straight to their hearts. I think while He was telling the waves to calm and commanding the wind to be still, He was wishing the same over His followers' troubled spirits.

So next time you find yourself in a tough life situation, remind yourself that while the storm may be scary, we have someone at work on our behalf to either push back the storm itself, or calm the storms of fear and doubt that rage within.

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?