Let Me Be Your One and Only

I was at work listening to Pandora, and Adele’s “One and Only” came on.

I started singing along. I sang it for real, like I was in my car or in the shower, and nobody was around.

Then my voice got wobbly and realized I was crying.

I felt like I was singing to myself (because sometimes I’m afraid I’m losing my gift), and to God (because I just want Him to trust me with this again), and to anyone who will listen (because I just want someone to listen).

“I promise I’m worthy! Come on and give me a chance!”

I Get Out!

I think when you dream about driving/riding/operating a vehicle, that vehicle represents your life.

That said, for several years when I’ve dreamt of driving, I couldn’t see. Sometimes the windshield was blocked; other times it was foggy outside. But most of the time, I was falling asleep at the wheel and couldn’t keep my eyes open. I was terrified I would crash. Yet I was so tired that I couldn’t apply the brakes.

I think it’s fair to say I’ve been navigating my life feeling out-of-control, powerless, blind and terrified.

That’s why the dream I had this morning feels significant:

I was sitting in a minivan in a parking lot. Some people were trying to get at me. I wasn’t scared of them, but they made me nervous. I hit the lock button to keep them out, but they kept trying the doors. Finally I started up the minivan and drove away. The weird people followed on foot.

Suddenly I was driving a huge bus–like a Greyhound. I was in a big closed-in building, and there was no door big enough for the bus. So I put my foot on the gas, maneuvered this huge steering wheel, and busted through the door. Brick and mortar flew everywhere. And I laughed out loud because I was free!

Yeah. I get out of your boxes.

My Angry Friend

(How do I say this without sounding crazy. I don’t think that’s possible. I’m okay with that.)

I have this friend named Angry Tracie. She first showed up when I was 16 and pregnant; until recently, I didn’t realize how much a part of my life she’d become.

Angry Tracie has been my trusted companion when I’m hurting, and I’ve especially enjoyed rehashing old hurts with her. She seemed to be the only person who listened to me and cared about my feelings. Her presence comforted me. Angry Tracie became my closest friend.

I got saved 13 years ago. But I’ve still trusted her more than anyone. Through lots of personal struggles, when I felt like God wasn’t listening, didn’t like me and wasn’t concerned about my broken heart, Angry Tracie was there to console me. (That confession might be offensive to some Christians. Or you might agree with my conviction that Jesus leaves each of us plenty of room–He’d call it grace–for discovering and working through our humanity. Room, plus the Holy Spirit.)

I didn’t recognize Angry Tracie’s influence, more than 20 years of it. But I do now. Knowing about her is changing the way I think and behave and live. Jesus is gently working us through it. Man. I love Him for that.

Do you have a “friend” who might be keeping you from really living, and really loving?

Hopes and Dreams

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

–Langston Hughes

 

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.

–Proverbs 13:12

You know how, when you’re a kid, you dream of being something or doing something particular? And maybe you believe it’s possible just because that’s what kids do.

Then you grow up, and you forget the dream because it was just a childish whim. Or you remember the dream, and you laugh because it really was silly. Or you chase the dream with all you have, because the vivid, bright beauty of it never faded with age (this being the ideal, of course).

Or.

Or you make the dream smaller and squeeze it into your ordinary life. Now it’s dull and dust-covered. Or you bury it alive, and it’s dying away.

I have this dream that’s been part of me as long as I can remember. I’ve never forgotten it. I’ve never laughed at it, never. But it feels too big for me. I’ve been afraid to hope for it, afraid to desire it.

I heard someone say once that the phrase “hope deferred” from the Proverbs doesn’t mean your hopes have been dashed by people or circumstances. Instead, it’s when you and I defer (delay, postpone) our own hope that our hearts become sick. The difference seems subtle at first, but it’s rather profound. When we choose to put off hope … well, nothing good comes from it.

I wonder if that’s how Hughes meant it, too, when he spoke of a deferred dream. This beautiful fragrant thing, like fresh ripe fruit, that when we leave aside for too long, it rots.

And have you ever noticed how dreams and hopes go hand-in-hand? They’re like sisters, or fraternal twins. Hopes (desires) and dreams.

What is your hope, your dream? What have you done with it?

Christian Womanist?

Womanist: believing in and respecting the abilities and talents of women; acknowledging women’s contributions to society. –Dictionary.com

I’m a womanist. This is almost my first time publicly acknowledging it.

I debated a bit about whether to call myself a feminist (according to Dictionary.com, one who believes women should have rights equal to men). But it seems to me that feminism views a man’s lifestyle as the ideal–like the goal of feminism is to live like men.

Meh.

If I wanted to have a positive affect in the world on behalf of women… if I wanted to change how women are viewed and valued in this world… I just wouldn’t start by putting men on a pedestal (for worshiping, for epitomizing, or for bashing). Let men be men. And let women be women.

I’m also a Christ-follower. I thought for a long time that I couldn’t be both. But I’m learning that God is clever enough to handle all my complexity. Still, I’m sure you can imagine the raging internal debate I’ve been having with myself.

What do you think? Do the paths of Christianity and womanism (and even feminism) diverge?

The Icing on the Cake

Special Note: Much as I dislike Christian-ese, I’m going to use a word straight out of the Church and Religious People’s Vocabulary Handbook: “Anointing.” Just so no one gets lost, I’ll define it: To be anointed means to have been chosen by God to do a specific thing especially for him.

I was thinking today about the difference between talent and anointing. I was thinking about this because I would consider myself a talented singer. But I have this wonderful, beautiful, amazingly talented friend who is very obviously anointed to lead worship through music. So I wondered today (and not for the first time) if I’m an anointed singer. After I mentally compared myself to my friend, I decided that I’m not.

But today for some reason, it didn’t end there. I felt like God stopped me and asked, “Who said you can’t be anointed?” He impressed on me that he wouldn’t give someone talent in an area if he wasn’t also prepared to anoint in that area. It was simply a matter of wanting it, and that would come by wanting him.

So, what kind of music do I listen to? What are my thoughts toward God? What am I doing to demonstrate to him that I want the honor and responsibility of being anointed? I felt like God said to me, “If you want it, come get it.” And then he reminded me that he’d said the same thing to me years ago. Instead of working toward it then, I spent years gradually letting fear lead to apathy. ”I’m not confident enough. I’m not smart enough. I’m not talented enough. I’m not compentent enough. God doesn’t even like me. Who wants it anyway? Who cares.” I eventually buried what he said beneath fear and presumed rejection.

Over the years I’ve often compared myself to my friend, and I always fell quite short. That’s stupid of me, of course. I’m not her. Despite my worst thoughts of myself, me being me doesn’t equal automatic disqualification. I think probably the number one requirement of anointing is that you’re you, not wishing you were someone else…

What is the difference between talent and anointing? That’s like asking what’s the difference between cake and icing: They’re not meant to be the same, they’re meant to go together (and quite deliciously). If God baked it, and you offer it back to him, he’ll totally frost it. And then it will be delicious for everyone, and God will get all the glory for making such an awesome cake.

No Pretty Bows

*Dusts off blog. Clears throat.*

This year has been a trip. I can’t begin to address all that has happened in one post, so I won’t try. But I’ve been seeing many things so much more clearly lately, and I wanted to share something I saw today.

I have this group of friends I meet with. They’re like my lifeline. (I never realized how much I needed safe people until I had them. Get yourself some. ) In candid conversations with them I realized that for years I’ve avoided facing my feelings. When it became clear I’d need to cut that out, I was afraid. I likened facing my feelings to voluntarily falling into a deep pit. I avoided the pit with vigor. I saw myself in the mouth of the pit, arms and legs stretched out, fingers and toes clenching dirt and roots to avoid the dark bottom. Pitfall prevention.

Eventually I chose to willingly go in. It was sort of like the dark tunnel. Scared as I was, I knew somehow God would be waiting for me there.

It’s been about a month since I made that decision, and I find I’m in a better place than I’ve been in years. Oddly, falling in wasn’t as grueling or horrible or dark as I thought it would be, and today I wondered why. The answer floated to the surface like one of those magic eight ball thingies.

I’d already fallen in a long time ago. I’d been at the bottom of the pit all this time.

And realizing I was in a pit gave me the resources to get out. So … lately I’ve been climbing out of the pit, not falling into it. The more I climb, the more light there is. The easier it is to breathe.

I could summarize with some super spiritual, super deep conclusion for you here, but I feel that tying a pretty bow on this would diminish it. So [draw your conclusions and insert them here].

Loneliness Defined

I have only just now realized what is at the heart of loneliness. At least, it’s at the heart of my own loneliness.

When life sucks, sometimes you need someone to talk to. But sometimes you need someone to hold you–really hold you–while you sob and snot everywhere. Right now, I don’t want to talk. I am particularly missing a chest to sink into, and arms to cradle me.

Friends, good friends, are wonderful things. I have good friends. But I don’t think I’ve ever had a friend with whom I could cry and just be held. I’ve never had a girlfriend hold me. (I don’t mean hold my hand or encircle my shoulder, but hold me. Say nothing, do nothing, just hold me until I’m all cried out.)

Right now, a good holding would be all the comfort in the world.

I never knew I would miss this until just now, when I need it and realize I no longer have it. And today, for the first time since the drama began, I feel lonely.

God In Time

We pray about what will happen. But we don’t typically pray about what already happened. Why?

***

I got to be part of an amazing conversation with some friends recently. It was one of those conversations that shifts paradigms.

Who’s seen the movie “The Kid” starring Bruce Willis? It’s the story of a 40-ish man who meets and gets to hang out with his 8-year-old self. Somehow we began chatting about this movie, and then we began to wonder what we’d say if we could talk to a former version of ourselves. We all shared about the things some former version of ourselves needed to hear. For example, I would tell my 14-year old self things like: you are valuable; though you’re the only stepchild of three children, you are just as important as your siblings; you belong; you’re not invisible; you’re accepted.

It was an emotional conversation. We wished and hoped that we could have somehow helped our former selves and unravel knots that still affect us today. We wished and hoped that God could somehow have healed us from the pain we endured then, thereby helping our present selves.

We dug deeper into thoughts about time and God. We shared snippets of things we’d heard or thought or felt.

• One of us shared a story she’d heard: God showed a man a vision of a moment in his childhood when he was wounded by someone he loved. The person had since died–but in this vision, the person apologized for wounding him as a child.
• Another of us shared about a story in the book “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” by Donald Miller. In it, Donald was trying to comfort a family member who had lost her father. He told her that they were all together in heaven already with her father, because heaven is outside of time.
• Another shared a vivid childhood memory of being at church with her mother. A few years ago, God reminded her of that day. He shared that He had been there in that moment, looking down on her and thinking joyfully about the day of her salvation more than 20 years later.

After these stories, we began to wonder:

God exists outside of time; we know this from the teachings in the Bible. So … if God can see/use time as the thing it truly is (not linear, but something else), if He can place Himself in or out of it, or use it as a tool to accomplish His will and serve His purposes … then why do we restrict our prayers to the future? Why shouldn’t we pray, today, for the hurting and struggling versions of ourselves that only God–unbound by these earthly restrictions–can reach?

If we could do this … what results would we see today? Imagine! Go ahead!

Sometimes

Sometimes the world closes in
And it’s dark and scary.

The shadows stretch out and distort
the things that once looked “right” and made sense.

Sometimes it feels like you’ve been
wandering in the dark for ages and ages.
You’ve been gone forever,
and people are just, just now noticing.

You thought God didn’t notice either.
He doesn’t seem to have much to say nowadays.
He doesn’t seem to be in arms’ reach lately.

Then sometimes He says something,
and you hear the whisper of His voice
and it feels like the warm breath of your mother
against your ear when she tells you it’s gon’ be alright.

It’s almost too beautiful to believe,
too wonderful to accept,
too sweet to swallow.

If you could hold a moment in your hands forever,
this would be it.