Silencing Voice

I’ve felt different for some time.. the freedom I’ve found, my small voice, suffocating, being shoved down, shoved back. Clawing to survive, being forced inside, blanketed, weighted. Held down from all angles. Crying for oxygen, for some ounce of gentleness.

And then I am stuck. Inside the lies, inside the time of what was and what should have been, could have been. Replaying the words, spoken to me and over me. Might as well have been written in me, one me. It shaped me, made me, built me and broke me. Sharpie.

It burns in my stomach, pounds in my head, rips my defenses. Not this again.

The numbing spread wide, covering my inside. Just when I think I might break, rest.

The illusion of safety, was just that. Illusion. No weeping for now, no tissues needed. Too gone for that in this season.

I ask and I ask but I know, ” I’m too much”. Caught in the twist, no one to take responsibility for this. Left in the mess. Alone. Forgotten. Cries with no sound fall on deaf ears abound.

Quiet. The stillness. It lurks. Fear at each turn. They tell you to mourn. You want to do good, can’t seem to make it right.

You think and you think. Because there must be a link, that makes me different from them. How’d you turn out so far gone in the end?

This little girl trapped in a body much to old for her.

She looks around at her peers, her friends known as family. Most with spouses and kids on their way to owning houses. They got 9 to 5 while she sits alone dying inside. quiet inside not yearning one bit.

For she, she just wants to belong.

She holds a small candle, deep in her heart. No one sees it there. Sometimes she’s afraid it’s gone out. The black is so dark.

Ridicule she’ll receive, if they even know or see. So fragile. So small. Because she’s much to old to hold onto hope that long. So she can never admit her deepest sadness exists.

Seeking Shalom

Nothing is so strong as gentleness. Nothing is so gentle as real strength. -Ralph W. Sockman

So here I am, the day after the election results. There’s a lot of feels. And yet last night I read a few books to a five year old, I made dinner and homemade bread and muffins. I fed my people. I listened to my housemate’s grief and tears over how torn she is over the elections. She works in one of the inner city schools. The students are scared. I went to receive a medicinal injection for an injury yesterday. The doctor said he hasn’t felt a day this dark since post Sept. 11th. Maybe that’s a gross overstatement to some, but it feel legitimate where I live. He was very sad. His family was grieved. He apologized to me and hoped that I could continue to get the care I need to live semi-pain free. I’m not sure what will happen. I don’t have much confidence in the nation or the church. I cried a lot before bed last night.

Tender, she said again. Tender is kind and gentle. It’s also sore, like the skin around an injury.-Brenna Yovanoff

Today I had double physical therapy (two therapists, two locations). Both my therapists were hurting. One is gay and has a baby who is adorable. The other is Asian, married to a white man, and they have one bio daughter and a Haitian daughter. My physical therapy assistant told me today about what her holidays are like. She’s from another country. One that doesn’t value women. She discussed with me very detailed pains from her childhood that led her down alcoholism and that on the day she decided to wish her father a Happy Father’s day, he emailed her right back to say “Thanks, I’m going to shoot myself today. Bye.” She shared with me what it’s been like for her in this country. That one of the few people who have loved her died in August and that the holidays will be exceptionally difficult. The election has brought up a lot, for many people.

I flat out told one of my therapists who’s gay, “I know you know I am a christian. I know you have shown great care for me. I want you to know I care about you, your rights, and your child. And I am so sorry for the way Christians have spoken about your sexual orientation. I am so sorry”. She’s a lovely woman. She’s terrified because the soon to be vice president believes in therapy to re-orient someones gender identity and sexual orientation. This form of therapy has been proven to be DANGEROUS. Nearly all centers like it have been sued because so many individuals have committed suicide while in it. Her assistant is terrified because even though she’s a legal immigrant, she regularly faces discrimination.

My other physical therapist was angry. Very angry about the election. She can handle the discrimination she faces daily as a minority, but her 7 year old can’t and shouldn’t have to. She’s afraid of the day someone says something to her husband about either his wife or children and he reacts angrily. She’s had a lifetime of learning to be gracious with discrimination and racism. He’s never had to. He’s a white man, who now deeply loves women who are not white.

Oh that gentleness! How far more potent it is than force! -Jane Eyre

So last night I read books to a 5 year old. She played her very first game of “Go fish” with me. We yelled GROAN in the parts of the Mo Willems book there those letters are very big (Waiting is Not Easy by Mo Willems is a favorite of mine!). It felt so good to groan loudly, to let it go so big that I needed a drink of water to cleanse my throat.

I said goodbye to a friend and her family as she left today for a big move out of the country. I snuggled the most squishy baby I’ve ever met. I soaked in his giant smile. She has asked me several times to move out of the country with her family. Because outside of America, family means something very different. I prayed for her and I thanked God for her and I fed her and I wept with her and she held me.

I made muffins to give to a friend who was up all election night sick from the news. I did everything slow, by hand. The muffins, the bread. No mixers, nothing. I needed to slow down life. Slow down the world. Focus on caring for those around me. To listen, to give, to sacrifice, to grieve.

I choose gentleness. Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice, may it be only in praise. If I clench my fist, may it be only in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only  of myself. -Max Lucado

And as I cried in bed late into the night, I thought about the things that terrify me about this world, this country. And let myself soak in the soothing parts of that day.. GROANING, feeding, mixing, praying, togetherness, stories I didn’t know. And I thought that’s just it. That’s what it means to be a minister of reconciliation. To bear witness to one another’s pain, to sit in it with them. And to let it soak so deep into your bones that it compels you to love others more fully, to seek Jesus more passionately, and to live more gentley. Life is hard. People are fragile. And I want to focus on restoring, even when the world feels bent on breaking me apart. Shalom.

As we come to grips with our own selfishness and stupidity, we make friends with the imposter and accept that we are impoverished and broken and realize that, if we were not, we would be God. The art of gentleness toward ourselves leads to being gentle with others-and it is a natural prerequisite for our presence to God in prayer.-Brennan Manning

Fosterless

A spoken word re-wind never finished:

 

I’m broken inside; screaming, I cry.

But nobody hears.

It’s deafening, this pain. 

I keep trekking for gains,

But I’m losing my stance,

trying to keep pace with this grief dance.

So much I didn’t know. So much I couldn’t show.

Trusted and loved, but it couldn’t last.

Too broken to keep, too rejected too deep.

Lost and alone, 

Turned 18 with no home.

I suffer from their choice, I’m left with no voice.

The system failed me, why couldn’t they see,

I was just young and alone,

Just wanting home,

the day I turned 18

Hope ended for me.

To love a girl who has lived through trauma

A girl who has lived through trauma has lived through a situation where her body, her mind, her self was not her own. Where she felt disjointed, ripped from her self, safety, and sanity. It was a moment, an experience, a something where her trust was smashed, her worth was gone and all there was was pain.
A girl who has lived through trauma is the girl who was pushed into the deep end of the pool when she didn’t know how to swim, but somehow found her way to the ledge anyway. She walked through a forest fire and didn’t succumb to the smoke, but dealt with the burns and made it out in spite of the flames. She found herself in free fall but refused to break upon impact.

She survived. She did.

But the thing about trauma, is that even when it is over it never really goes away.

And sometimes trauma is loud. Sometimes it’s the monster banging at the windows and screaming gutturally and demonically inside of nightmares. It’s nails on a chalkboard and an earthquake that rattles everyone’s floors. It smashes everything in its wake and forces, no, demands that everyone acknowledge its terrible, terrible presence. She won’t have any choice but to sit with hands clapped over her ears making sounds that are barely human because she just wants everything to stop and it won’t.

But other times, trauma is quiet. It’s sneaky.

It’s the feeling that she is being watched or that she is walking down the street with the word ‘victim’ painted on her forehead in red and everyone is privy to her secrets. It’s the nagging fear that if she goes to sleep her dreams will be anything but restful. It’s the little whisper saying, “You will never be whole again,” that itches its way into the back of her mind and repeats over, and over, and over. And you won’t even see it because she convinces herself that she is the only one who knows that it is there.

It’s the feeling that she is a 100,000 piece puzzle of black and grey and everyone staring at the mess realizes that putting her back together is simply not worth the effort.

So when you love a girl who’s gone through trauma, you’re saying that you see the worth in helping her bandage the wounds. You’re saying that you see the worth someone else tried to bury. You’re saying you are not afraid of the bad days and you see the beauty in the good days. You’re saying that a lot of things may scare you, but trauma isn’t one of them.

When you love a girl who’s battled trauma, you’re really saying,

“Love, let me help you heal because I believe you can.”

Loving girl who has managed to make it to the other side of a traumatic experience is like deciding to restore an abandoned house. She has the framework and the good bones, but you may need to spackle holes someone else left behind on the the walls. She has the the makings for beautiful, light-filled windows, but you’ll need to replace a few of the cracked panes with new glass. She has the door frame, she just needs a door.

She’ll make a lovely home one day, but there needs some care in order to make a space.

See, loving a girl with trauma in her history is not some choose your own adventure or some level in a game you need to beat. It takes time, it take patience. It’s not something you ‘win at’ it’s something you deal with day by day. It takes a level of commitment because reality is, loving her is not simple.
She is inherently complicated. She is stained with memories she wishes she did not have but that she will never be rid of. She is pieced together and the stitching may be tighter in some spots than others so you have to be careful to not unravel her with one careless tug.

But she is brave. And she is strong.

And when she realizes that you are choosing to love her, and not hurt her, she will love you back with the same kind of tenacity that it took to walk through fire.

And she will hold out her palm and show you the burn marks and instead of apologizing for bothering you with their appearance, she’ll trust you to hold her hand anyway. End link

My Bursting Heart MUST find vent at my Pen: Part II

Late nights, long hours
Questions are drawn like a thin red line
No comfort left over
No safe harbor in sight-Sara Groves

I am fighting all the firsts. The very earliest of word and examples I was taught. I am relearning. And I am weary.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve linked up with Five Minute Friday. It’s been some time since I’ve written regularly. You see, my words are not there. They are stuck inside. Somewhere fighting to find a voice, but feeling so small, so invaluable, so useless.

I am fighting my firsts. I am fighting all the things that were first told to me about how little I matter. I am fighting beliefs about who I was told I was. In some ways I can so clearly see God’s hand freeing me this past year. And in so many ways I also feel so intensely trapped inside, fighting, alone. More alone than I’ve ever known.

diggin in the dirt till it hurts
won’t come up for air don’t care
how long it takes me
I get tired want to just get by can’t I get by
but I can’t cuz there’s a
fire in my bones, fire in my bones
burnin in my bones -Sara Groves

I have joy. I am sure in my core I have much hope too. That’s the thing, my life looks very different than how I feel. And maybe that’s one of the marks of a disciple… that even though inside I feel confused, mixed up, alone, and very weary.. I am weak. I am tired. I long for an end in ways I am not sure any I know can relate to. But on the outside, I am striving. I am living. I am living so fully, vibrantly even. And it’s real. It is not a persona. Inside I can’t sense hope, but I know my life lives hope. Hope show’s up. Words of truth come out from my core, the core that’s been fighting to survive, to live, to grow for so long. It’s the fight of flesh.

oh I’m gonna find the truth
even if it kills me
oh I gotta get a new view
the only way I know to
oh I gotta keep my eyes wide open
keep my eyes wide open– Sara Groves

I have seen His hand provide. And I am waiting on that again. The wait is long. It is hard. And there are so many firsts that keep pulling me down. I am crying for relief some days, for a way to voice, an avenue to cry out to, a God with skin on. I know God will be faithful again. And I wait, for the words to come again.

Really we don’t need much 

Just strength to believe
There’s honey in the rock,
There’s more than we see
In these patches of joy
These stretches of sorrow
There’s enough for today
There will be enough tomorrow-Sara Groves

“My Bursting Heart must find vent at my Pen” Part: 1

If I know what love is, it’s mostly because of her.

Several times the last few months I’ve reached for my phone to call her, only to remember I can’t. She’s dead. On the way home from a particularly devastating doctor appointment a couple months ago, I actually pulled out my phone and typed in her name, as if I could still reach her.  But it’s no longer her number. I looked at the phone and just placed it on the passenger seat next to me and proceeded to talk to her, as if she was still alive and on the other end of the line, because I needed someone to talk to, someone who knows me and loves me and was willing to listen. It felt so good to see her name on my phone, even if it wasn’t real. And a few minutes later when the ache of the emptiness of essentially talking to myself stung more than the reality of her being gone, I pulled over and deleted her name from my phone. It was time. I cried.

So this is what it means to be an adult. To have to keep going even when the world feels cold and lonely. Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Sometimes, when one person is absent, the whole world seems depopulated.—Allphonse de Lamartine

Losing someone you love really affects you. It won’t magically go away. Sometimes there’s pressure on mourning, so you stop (or maybe never had the opportunity to, because realistically, mourning has privilege attached to it, and not everyone is privileged to be able to). But it stays buried deep down and becomes a deep hole of ache.

That’s the thing when someone you love, really love, dies. Instead of going into every fight with back up (whether it be an academic, illness, or some other feat that requires a strong sense of support), you have to go in alone. Often without a soul even knowing you’re in the battle.

I miss her in all the places and things we did together. I miss her in the movie theater, with my can of off brand soda and two candy bars she’d let me pick out at CVS. I miss her at the grocery store when I see the Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal and Oreos she bought for our sleepovers.

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.—Aeschylus

I miss her at Christmas, when she’d make the two of us lasagna and she always made me a stocking, filled with candy and little treats. I miss her at my old church, where we’d go to senior luncheons together (I could never pass up getting to hang out with all the older ladies.. and free lunch!). I miss Christmas shopping with her. She could out-shop me any day. I miss the smell of holidays in her house and the bright red lipstick that always left a little stain on my cheek when she kissed me (I sort of just miss being touched in general). I miss her on the roads she’d drive, our breakfast spot, her favorite restaurant, the pond she’d take me to.

Even places she’s never been, have memories of her. When I was in college, she was one of two people I ever received mail from. She sent me a package every semester. On each of the mission trips I went on, it caused her much worry that I would be leaving the country yet again, but I’d hear from all her friends how proud of me she was. It’s easier to miss someone at their cemetery because you’ve never been there together, but to miss someone at all the places and situations you were in together feels gut wrenching.

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”— Morrie Schwartz

She always told me she loved me. She knew how to love, practically and in her words. She knew how to love ME… how I would feel loved, before I was even aware how I feel love, probably because we both felt love in the same ways. Now I have a hard time remembering the last time I audibly heard it. And maybe that’s another hard reality of being an adult now, that you don’t get to hear you’re loved very often. But I know how to give it and say it, and I will continue to, even when it’s hard. Even when I don’t hear it towards me. She taught me that.

She loved mightily.

“The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.”— Henry Miller

No one has ever become poor by giving.”
– Anne Frank

The anniversary of my grandmother’s death recently passed by. It was a quick day for me. I was pretty sick. I slept much of the day. I thought about her and still went about my remembrance celebration. This year, it was a peanut butter cupcake. I wrote my letter to her, because words mattered to her and I. I spent weeks trudging through the cards in various stores, trying to find the perfect one… because even though I have my own card business now, I wanted the perfect one, with the perfect meaning. It’s the only time in my life I can justify spending $6 on a card. And I sit at the bakery on the anniversary of her death, and I write her a note, part update, part longing, part grief. And I eat my cupcake, and I thank God that I had someone for a little while, and that He gave me it, her: stability, and warmth, and touch, and grace.

And I reflected about what parts of who I am actually came from her. I have never been like anyone I am biologically related, but this year, I knew I was like her in some ways. And I am so glad that some of her goodness carried over, to live on in me and through me.

She saw the best in me. And by seeing the best in me, she empowered me.

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see in truth that you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”
— Kahlil Gibran

 

 

On Hardship and Grief

There’s many painful things that people have to endure, but grieving them alone is by far the most difficult of them all.

31 DAYS OF WRITING: Hoping, Healing, and Caring for those around us

For the next 31 days I’ll be writing about all sorts of pre-determined topics everyday on hoping, healing, and caring for those around us. Sometimes the most extraordinary thing we can do is live out lives aware and in tune with those around us, normal, thoughtful lives.  Scroll down for DAY 1 below.

• DAY 1: A place called grief
• DAY 2: Family is a complicated word for me, but I’m not giving up
• DAY 3: Capture
• DAY 4: The Frailty of Life
• DAY 5: The power of being with someone can alter a life
• DAY 6: I am a promise, a possibility
• DAY 7: What if we really took the message to love one another seriously?
• DAY 8: Purple people are my people
• DAY 9
• DAY 10: Change causes us to be flexible
• DAY 11
• DAY 12
• DAY 13
• DAY 14
• DAY 15
• DAY 16: Sometimes Waiting is the Hardest thing
• DAY 17
• DAY 18
• DAY 19:It’s hard to look at others who have directly caused suffering and affliction through their actions and find a reason to honor them.
• DAY 20
• DAY 21: On Healing and Normalcy
• DAY 22
• DAY 23
• DAY 24
• DAY 25
• DAY 26
• DAY 27
• DAY 28
• DAY 29
• DAY 30
• DAY 31

DAY 1: A place called grief

It was 8PM on a weeknight. I sat at Starbucks with a tall decaf hot coffee in mid winter, desperate to not be overtaken by the wave of despair that seemed to creep into every ounce of my being when the sun went down during these 4:30PM New England winter daylight savings. I need light in a similar way that I need water, only not just any light, sunlight.

I looked around and wondered if anyone knew I was hurting. If anyone could hear my calling, crying, hoping. How many times had I sat in this same very place and not noticed or wondered if anyone around me was hurting, crying, hoping for something their own vocal chords could not convey. How many times had I been unaware of the agony that others were enduring?

And here I sat, desperately wanted to weep, but the tears wouldn’t come. They pain was agonizing, like shards of glass ripping me apart, only it wouldn’t stop. It’s surreal. There was no passing out from this pain, just the crippling anxiety of fear, of failure, of heart brokenness, shredding my heart to pieces. I wanted to scream, but nothing came.

I wrote one line down on a piece of paper. It was all I could do that day: “You are not a failure.” After staring for what felt like a decade, drips of water pounded and blurred the blue lines of the paper. I didn’t feel like I was crying, but tears crashed and splashed and blurred my one sentence until the words were almost no more.

Loss felt deep and piercing. Failure. I had failed numerously in ways I wasn’t aware. And in order to heal, to grow, I had to lose more. I had to step out of all I had known and step into what felt like utter darkness. That’s the thing about tragedy, death, disease, illness, loss, it puts you in this other category, the categories that no one wants to be in, the ones you don’t choose. And you probably won’t know what to do when you have to start living in it. I was trying so desperately for so long not to be in those categories. I fought them. But I could not longer. Whether I liked it or not, my world had changed and in the most painful of ways, God began calling me into a more rich, albeit far more painful place. A place called grief.

GRIEF

But the truth is, we’re all fighting a battle.

It’s Invisible Illness Week. I don’t think most people know that. But I do.

Somedays I wake up sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. I live with chronic, progressive illness. I have since I was very young and it became much more pronounced as a late teenager. And somedays I cry just from being tired of being sick.

I was first hospitalized for it as an “adult” when I was 17. I would not stop internally bleeding. I could not hold food in. I saw glittery stars all day long. The first few weeks out of the hospital was my first time needing a wheel chair. I used those little electric carts at Target. Mind you, I could walk, I just needed to reserve my energy and it was painful to move. All my joints hurt, my head would pound, and I would be fighting to breath. But I so desperately wanted to get out of the house…

You see, I had lost a full sports scholarship to college for my illness. I had to stop working. I did not drive but now I could no longer walk many places so I was completely reliant on friends to drive me to and from. I could not eat much and I also had to be careful when I ate, how much I ate, and what I ate. I had to take over 50 pills a day.  And my mother moved away with my little sister too. My whole world shifted again. At 17 years old. All within the same 3 weeks.

So here I was in target with an older friend, driving around the cart. And I received so many stares from others. They felt like judgements.. judgements that I shouldn’t be using that cart, that my leg wasn’t broken nor was my head bald (as if damaged limbs and cancer are the only forms of debilitating illness). I felt ashamed and thought maybe I should push through it, push through the pain. I have always been sensitive to what others think, to their judgements. To this day, I still struggle to use those motorized carts even when I need them.

I have a host of invisible illnesses that include: chronic pain, chronic fatigue, chronic dizziness/vertigo, ulcerative colitis/Crohn’s disease, asthma, migraines, arthritis, TMJ, Ricketts, visual field loss, PCOS, PTSD,  pseudotumor cerebri, depression/anxiety,  and sensory processing disorder… to name a few.

What you do not see are the 12-15 doctor visits a month, iron and nutrient infusions, or the scar from my breast bone to my pubic area. People who know me, KNOW I push myself, because if I didn’t, I would go no where. I’d live sad, or worse, angry at the state of my life and all the dreams I will never fulfull if I didn’t push myself often. Not many people expect or hope much from me or for me. If I didn’t push myself, I’d lose myself.

I live in a certain amount of pain regularly that I believe many of those around me can’t comprehend, physically and emotionally.

Then there’s a dear friend of mine. We went to get pedicured a few months back for my birthday. She could not keep her leg in the angle required to get the pedicure. She has a neurological disorder too. She barely makes it around. She fights depression. She longs to be a friend and a mother in a way she’s not able to always. Oh how I love her. Instead of going bowling, we go to McDonalds and use the new computerized bowling games there. It’s the only way she can bowl with her young daughter.

This past week has been terrible. I acquired a cold on my plane ride home from a trip this summer. I have not got rid of it yet. I have a low immune system. I had to go into the hospital for a day to get “buffed up” in hopes of fighting it off. Many weeks later, I’m still fighting it. Now it’s my allergy season. It’s worse than I have ever experienced. This past week I had a couple days where I could do nothing. I was in so much pain from allergies and sneezing. My body ached. I needed pain medicine to make it through. And now I have a huge hernia from sneezing so much. And a flair of tendonitis and shingles and asthma. Oh yea, I’m not allowed to sneeze. And I burst a vessel in my nose. And we’re hoping I don’t get pneumonia. And I got a letter from my oh so lovely neurologist that I love. She’s leaving. And I am sad and nervous about that.

Saturday I went apple picking. And it cost me a lot physically. But I did it and I loved it and I am glad. And some days, I will do other things that will cost me physically. Or I’ll help a friend and her newborn when they aren’t well, even if it’s just making dinner and playing with him while she naps. Because it feels good to give, even when I’m not at my finest. And somedays I need the handicap parking, even if I don’t limp when I walk or have some other noticeable ailment. My body and my mind bear the scars of the illness underneath my clothing, underneath my skin.

There are stigmas attached to invisible ilnesses. Sometimes people don’t believe you. Sometimes they say it. Sometimes not. Sometimes you get looks, or worse, they outright ignore you. Sometimes I don’t get the help or care I need. And I’ve learned to push through and care for myself. Sometimes it’s hard that there’s not more physical help. Sometimes it’s hard when there is help that I don’t need at that time.

I cried when I got the letter from my neurologist saying she was leaving the practice. She would validate my physical and emotional pain and try to help me fit in the mold of how modern society works (bigger, better, faster, more). I struggle and battle in a culture that rarely rests or stops or considers that someone (like me!) might not be able to do or participate in the same things in the same way as others. It’s often felt like a constant game of catch up for me. Catch up to how far others are walking, catch up and push through the long shopping day with others, etc. I’ve learned that I can’t easily be accomodated. So unless I know I can either push through something or make an easy accommodation myself, I just don’t show up. And my neurologist, she’s the one who gets how the U.S. functions and how lost I get in trying to find a quality of life in it.

I have an uncle with MS and a friend with MS. Another friend with a rare breathing issue that could kill her if she gets pneumonia. I have another uncle with cancer and a grandfather that’s dying of a brain tumor. My mother has several diseases as does my biological father and two of my sisters. I have had several housemates over the last 5 years that battle depression and GAD and several more close friends with it. Two friends are fighting addictions. And this last month alone I had a student have 4 panic attacks on the soccer team I coach. Yesterday another student confided in me how she often has them about academics too. And last week a student that I coach told me how she witnessed her parents death and was later adopted and now struggles with mental health. You’d never know it looking at these people. Not one. You could go out for pizza with them and it wouldn’t come up. We all adjust. We all fight some days and rest on other days and laugh about it here and there.

But the truth is, we’re all fighting a battle. For some, it’s invisible, unseen to the naked eye and fierce. And we could all use a few kinds words here and there reminding us that we are seen and not invisible, not someone to be mocked or second guessed for using the electric cart or elevator instead of the stairs or because today we can walk up and down the hill but tomorrow we can’t get out of bed. We could all use a little bit more compassion in our hearts and out of our lips.

 

She felt it, and named it, and grieved.

I found a toddler toy around my house. I hadn’t seen it in near a year. I saw it and I didn’t touch it.

I let it sit in the corner behind that couch for days. If I touched it, I knew I’d weep.

Weep for the little one who threw it who’s no longer in my life, but very much a part of my heart. Weep for the many ways I’ve lost.

I remembered. I remembered how it got there. I remember when that little one threw it back there and I laughed and said I’d get it later. Later never happened.

Grief is the strangest and most absurd facet of life I have encountered.

Naomi, she is my girl. I think we’d understand each other well. I think we’d be great friends. Naomi was well acquainted with grief. She’s sort of been a role model for me with grief. She suffered: Foreign land. Widow. Death of children. Alone. Abandoned. Feeling forgotten.

Sometimes I think Naomi get’s a bad reputation, sort of shunned for being renamed from Naomi “pleasantness” to Mara “bitter”.

Yeah, life feels bitter in grief, in the process of grief, in the shock and pain of things you couldn’t quite prepare for, over things you could not control.

Those on the outside could probably look at her and think she lacks faith, that she’s resisting God. Perhaps even accuse her of not having an “eternal perpective” of joy and only looking at her “circumstances”. You’ve likely heard it if you’re a believer (maybe even said it yourself).. “You can’t rely on your emotions.” or “trust God”.

You see, that little toy was just a breaking point. I’ve lost a lot this past year. Sometimes the enormity of our loss leaves us open to triggers of grief, where unseemingly small things reveal large aches, longings. And those triggers reveal a place that was once filled, now dried up empty. Hollow and heavy.

But Mara, she was waiting for the redemption of God. She was in the pit and waiting, not denying the enormity of her grief. Mara wore her grief, she expressed it. She gave it room to breath in a culture that understood it, even valued grief. Sometimes it can feel like the whole world knows the facts of my grief, but no one knew of that little toy that remained just out of eye sight, me too afraid to touch it, too afraid I’d fall apart and be seen as “unfit” in for ministry. No one knew except for me. Too tired to weep again for things I can’t control. Just trying to maintain some normalcy, some rhythm, some sanity. Too afraid to start weeping again for the losses, for the grief.

Because in our world, we don’t wear grief. We are told to be “strong”, to have “faith & joy”, to “trust”. Almost as if it’s manufactured in a store and all we must do it purchase it. We don’t know how to honor our emotions. Instead we manufacture some semblance of what we think people should look and act like and we force others to do the same. But we’re missing the mark. We’re suffocating and creating cultures of loneliness instead.

Tragedy is a thief that steals our normalcy, our rhythm, our people, our way of live and living.  Nothing about despair feels orderly or methodical. Nothing about tragedy allows us to remain the same, to keep the same routines, even the same way of relating to others. Naomi got that. She was more than a woman in despair. She named what she felt. She wore it in the most tangible way, in her name. No one questioned where she was at. She could no longer relate to “pleasantness”. No one second guessed her faith. No one gave Naomi “pat” answers. She just felt it and named it and grieved.

Sometimes we sit in our circumstances and not one ounce feels right; far from fair, far from just. I imagine that’s what Mara did. She sat in. She observed. She grieved. She winced at the insensitivity of others at times and tried her very best to be gracious, even in her bitterness. Because this life, this grief, tastes awfully bitter. I imagine that Mara, like me, wept hard. And life could not be the same. Ever. She could just not go back to who she was or what she did. Impossible.

Naomi is a woman I can follow. I know Ruth is lovely. I know Ruth had a lot of faith and trusted God… but Naomi, she’s my woman. She’s like me. She can’t hide how painful it all feels, how heavy the grief is. Even when others feel it is too much for them to see or watch. She wears her grief, perhaps a grief that intimidates and frightens others. And the most astounding thing happens through it, when Mara is able to air and live out her grief. She doesn’t stay Mara. She becomes Naomi again! From pleasant, to bitter, to pleasant. AND SHE PRAISES GOD. Maybe Naomi wasn’t weak. Maybe, in the act of wearing her grief, she was one of the strongest, no a doubter, but a griever and a proclaimer of God. Maybe, just maybe, in Naomi’s bitter state, she saw and experienced God’s presence far more powerfully than she ever could have in trying to maintain “pleasantness”.

Maybe we could all use some of that in our lives. Maybe our grief and pain isn’t too much. Maybe there’s far more in store if we could just figure out how to feel our emotions and be alongside one another in theirs.

Naomi, I can’t wait to meet her.