Lay it All Down

Music has a way of expressing how we feel… stealing words right outta our hearts, better said than we ever could.  Sometimes they pinpoint how we’ve been feeling or what we’ve been struggling with for so long, something we couldn’t put our own finger on.

This is such a song.

Nightminds
Missy Higgins

Just lay it all down
Put your face into my neck and let it fall out
I know, I know, I know
I knew before you got home

This world you’re in now
It doesn’t have to be alone
I’ll get there somehow, ’cause
I know, I know, I know
When even springtime feels cold

But I will learn to breathe this ugliness you see
So we can both be there
And we can both share the dark
And in our honesty, together we will rise
Out of our nightminds, and into the light
At the end of the fight

You were blessed by
A different kind of inner view
It’s all magnified
The highs would make you fly
But the lows make you want to die

And I was once there
Hanging from that very ledge where you are standing
So I know, I know, I know
It’s easier to let go

But I will learn to breathe this ugliness you see
So we can both be there
And we can both share the dark
And in our honesty, together we will rise
Out of our nightminds
And into the light at the end of the fight

And in our honesty, together we will rise
Out of our nightminds
And into the light at the end of the fight

After a time in my life when most of my relationships have been tested and tried, I’ve found myself meditating on what true loyalty means.  What it looks like in relationships.  If it’s possible, even in me.

This song just touched my heart, so I had to share.  It describes the true-blue loyal friend we’re all seeking: one who sees your struggles, sticks by your side through it and shares the dark with you… then helps you walk together toward new light.  New hope and peace.  A new perspective.

God, to be such a friend and to have one!

“Koinonia”: A Taste of True Community

Once upon a time, I attended the Focus on the Family Institute (now Focus Leadership Institute) in Colorado Springs.  An amazing, life-altering experience, and one of the best decisions I’ve made in my spiritual journey. 

What made it so awesome?

Fellowship!  Up until that point, I walked out my faith largely alone.  Sure I churched, retreated, Bible studied, mission-tripped, worshipped and prayed.  Yay for me!  But those didn’t change me the way people did.  Until FFI, I was living day-to-day by myself. 

The Focus Institute’s focus on community turned my world upside-down.  Suddenly I was surrounded by believers who lived their faith and passionately loved the Lord!  I felt safe, valued for who and how I am, and respected, and everyone around me was too.  It was amazing.  The men stepped up and treated us ladies with love and service – the way God designed women to be treated – instead of pursuing us for worldly reasons.  It was a slice of heaven. 

Weekly we came together for “Koinonia” – fellowship, worship, food and just QT.  I adored it!!  People were honest about where they were at.  Broken from their pasts.  In such intimacy, facades couldn’t survive, and it rocked! 

Since leaving Focus, I’ve hunted for a community of believers that compares.  I’ve struggled to find others (especially my age) willing to live their lives openly.  After several years of searching, I found myself retreating to old ways of doing relationships and feeling vulnerable at how vulnerable I became after Focus.  Being fake and “having it all together” became the norm again.  There seemed no other option. 

This is precisely why I love the article below.  God’s church – His beloved bride! – is meant to be raw, honest, confronting and confrontable (in love).  We need each other to be honest so we can grow.  We need a place we can let our guards down.  Church hasn’t been that place for me, yet.  But biblical church does not mean playing the Christian part, speaking Christianese and announcing “I’m too blessed to be stressed!” when your world’s crashing down.  It’s being the part — doing it together — and sharing when life is just plain hard. 

It’s been said that Joy shared is doubled, and grief shared is halved.  This is why everyone needs community, even the ‘independents’ among us.

So thank you to people who don’t sugar-coat life, who confess their faults and let me know mine :) because how else can we grow if we’re not challenged?  How else can we stand in tough times, like what our country’s facing, than together?  I believe the answer is we can’t. 

We need true church!  So let’s recreate it, starting with us… but if you enjoy a superficial, comfortable world, I wouldn’t apply: http://charismamag.com/index.php/fire-in-my-bones/30788-koinoniaa-missing-ingredient-in-todays-church

P.S. Enjoy these young men’s Focus Institute testimonies.  I, too, shared their sentiment, and 5+ years later some of my great Focus friendships endure!  http://focusyourstory.com/?p=1884, http://dustenharward.com/blog/?p=133, and http://dustenharward.com/blog/?p=97.

Addicted

In the words of John Mayer, we all self-soothe somehow… me?  Music.  People.  Cooking.

What are yours?  When life’s edgy, money’s low, pain comes, or you’re alone.. where do you turn?

We’re all designed to be comforted.  I know I need it. 

Like today… my ambitious plans for the day were scrapped by a sudden need for rest and peace.  After spending my morning with a friend, I found myself needing encouragement this thunderstormy afternoon.  But my friend was on an airplane elsewhere.

Far from family and lifelong friends, I have just a few trusted Atlanta friends right now.  I’ve met loads of people, but trust takes time.  For reasons such as distance and others, sometimes people can’t be there for us… so we learn to turn elsewhere.  

Without human comfort, many people seek unhealthy ways to escape pain.  This is a false comforter, and it’s meant to take your mind off the present and bring you elsewhere.  We call ‘em coping mechanisms.  Gone unchecked, our methods of coping become addictions, and the longer we feed them, the more fierce the battle for freedom becomes. 

Walking out one’s freedom can be excruciating because an addict has conditioned himself to send pain packing in the form of a bottle, a meal, or a host of other things.  He’s never learned to deal with life; he’s just run away.  To kick an addiction, he has to re-learn how to face troubles head-on.  In recovery, the addict often experiences for the first time emotions he froze out years earlier. 

When they break free, many former addicts say they feel like they suddenly ‘came to’, like awakening after a long absence.  How can that be?  They were living life one day at a time like the rest of the world, so where did they go all those years?

They fled the present.  They got so wrapped in the arms of their comforter that they detached from today.  They weren’t living their lives at all — they were running all those years. 

I’ve done that, too. 

Over the years I turned to people, but many didn’t know how to handle what I was going through because they hadn’t personally experienced it, or for others, they had but hadn’t dealt with it.  Where once we connected, I now felt a massive void with old friends and family who couldn’t walk with me through my experience. 

The more misunderstood and alone I felt, the more I burst to share with someone who could offer comfort or peace or answers.  I wanted to share with them the true me, including my story.  But to my surprise, I found most people wanted me to pretend my way through the healing process and ‘fake it til you make it’.  But hiding persistent pain unraveled me.  

To pretend you didn’t walk through pain doesn’t make it any less real, it only isolates you from the present and the people around you.  It hinders progress.  It encourages you to live on the surface of life, in a shallow contrived personality, not in your true self.  It beckons you to hide your heart, not unveil it.  So I learned that in order to move forward, I must acknowledge my past without dwelling on it, just simply say This is part of God’s story in my life.  He will redeem it. 

Our pain is not evil… but leaving people alone in it – that is evil.  In the words of Ben Harper:

My eyes burn with unshed tears
My body is weak from so many silent years
Too many people say goodbye before they say hello
Step into the morning and disappear

If we pass by a hurting person roadside, bleeding and broken, we in essence heap dirt on their grave because we’re letting them die.  It’s not always a physical death (the Good Samaritan comes to mind); sometimes it’s an emotional or spiritual death.  We cannot sit by and watch their hope die, their peace be stolen from them, without a fight.  Without helping.  There are some things in life people cannot bear alone.  Enter friendship :)

Human nature’s knee-jerk reaction is to run from ugly reality and towards shiny happy things, pretending life is always beautiful.  Not only do people run from their own personal pain but from yours, too.  For this very reason, pain often isolates us.  Nothing’s wrong with you for hurting; people just don’t want the reminder.  Your pain snaps them back to the present, the one they’ve been fleeing, and leaves them needing comfort. 

So now you’re asking- What’s the good news Debbie downer?  Hah, I’m glad you did!

The good news is we aren’t alone, ever, even when our closest friends aren’t “getting it”.  He is our hiding place in hard times, and Beloved that is not a pretty sentiment; it’s true!  As real as the chair you are sitting on is our Father above who watches, sees, and will repay any evil done to you.  He redeems pain (Ps 103:4), collects our teardrops (Ps 56:8), and demands payment from the thief, who when apprehended must repay seven times what he stole from you (Prov 6:31).  Vengeance is His; He will repay (Rom 12:19)! 

There is hope for the addicted.  Instead of reaching for what brings us fleeting comfort, let’s reach for Him.  Here’s a beautiful Starfield song demonstrating His presence even in our pain:   

In the shadows, I can hear Your voice
Singing to me
In the valley, I can hear Your heart
Reaching for me now
And I wait flooded with the strength of Your peace

You’re my defender, the shield of my heart
You are my hiding place
When terror surrounds me, You keep me from harm
You are my hiding place

In the darkness, I can feel Your light
Wrap around me
In my suffering, I can feel Your joy
Rising in me now
And I wait, flooded with the strength of Your peace

Here before You, Jesus
In this place
Here before You now
Face to face

Under the shelter of the Most High
Will I be saved, and will I abide

He is our hiding place.

Mastering Relationships

Mastering relationships is one of life’s most challenging and rewarding pursuits.

Relationships are so… complex.  Dynamic.  Constantly-moving targets and shifting emotions: the pure JOY of connecting with someone, then pain when they betray us, break promises, stop caring, or just plain forget about us.    

I’m seeking friends who don’t go away.  Friendships that sustain new boyfriends, crazy new jobs and schedules, misunderstandings and weeks of phone tag.  I want true friends.  As I get older and try desperately to stay faithful to Him and who He created me to be, I’m learning such friends are nearly impossible to find. 

But I have this rather annoying quality.  My heart doesn’t give up on finding this love.  It persists in seeking out the best in others and believing God will bless me again with close friends.  It wakes me each day and tries to keep an open heart despite being disrespected, manipulated, envied, underestimated.  It keeps me believing I will find true connection with someone else one day, true friendship.  I refuse to accept that it doesn’t exist.   

Why?  Because I’ve tasted it!  In Colorado Springs.  With my mentor Patti.  In South Africa.  At Bimini Bay Church.  I don’t seek it out with non-believers because I know love can only come from its Author Himself!  He is the only One that helps us overcome ourselves, our bad habits and cycles in order to put someone else first in our lives.  It’s His love that pours out through us.

At my job, I encounter hundreds of people every week.  It’s like a live course in sociology, and it’s taught me much.  One thing I’ve witnessed is how most adults are super fake with each other.  At some point they stopped being real and now revolve their conversations around gossip, shallow discussions about the weather and economies, or competitive contests to see whose kids are smarter, thighs are thinner, or husbands are banking more.  Some days it’s an all-out Fake Fest!    

I’m stunned how much people change from day to day (and how others remain the exact same), how they talk about their in-laws (or their own kids), how their talk doesn’t match their walk.  I see the same people come in like clockwork and watch how they respond to life — to struggles, to pain and surgery, bad weather and bratty kids, and to me the “front desk girl”.  Some don’t give me the time of day, to be expected, while others treat me as one of their own.  I help people who aren’t appreciative or are downright demanding.  I hear boasts of brand-new yachts and business successes.    

Then I see others, the humble few.  The amazingly persistent who face serious trials but ALWAYS come with a bright smile on their faces (incredible to see every day!).  People undaunted by challenges.  Yes, many curse our country and political climate, but these refreshing others find the best in each circumstance.  I see them bite their tongues.  I see them help each other. 

I also notice the hurting ones, the withdrawn ones who don’t reach out or are so entrenched in their pain that they fail to respond when someone reaches out to them.  I hear thin women obsess about their physiques and be threatened by a beautiful woman in their midst.  I witness miscommunications and hurt feelings.  I’ve learned that some people, no matter what I do, may never smile back.   Their bitterness at life, at unmet needs and burst dreams, is etched on their faces.  It’s on the tip of their tongue.  It sours today for them because they’re still heartsick over yesterday and unable to envision happier tomorrows.

But why?

As I’ve adjusted to life away from my family, I’m beginning to experience similar struggles.  In my family’s absence, I’m not opening up to people like I once did.  Part of my heart seems hardened beyond repair, unable to forget the many friends I’ve invested in who turned away or just plain weren’t loyal.  They only wanted a piece of me, not the whole thing — but I’m not a “piece of me” type of girl.  I’m either in or I’m out.  I’ve found so few friends with the same approach to friendship that I’ve about given up. 

And I see that… I see that in them, the members of my country club.  I see some who don’t engage others or make eye contact.  For the first time ever, I’m beginning to understand their distance.  I hear them talk about spouses who don’t treat them well, at all, who tear them down, neglect them,  and demand their own way.  And lately, I’m surprised to find myself empathizing!

On days like today, my mind hops back on the “merry-go-round” wondering when I’ll find that magical, faithful friend.  The Bible says there’s a friend who sticks closer than a brother.  I know that Friend as Jesus, and yes He most certainly does.  He doesn’t go away.  But I’d really love to have such a friend here on earth.  I need a confidante, a best friend, the first one I’ll call when my day goes well – or takes a nosedive off an unforeseen cliff, who’ll laugh with me when my week is a disaster (like last week!).  Someone who won’t judge… or compete… or be threatened… one who won’t walk away when I need them most or when they fall head over heels for another.  Someone who’s down for a night in as much as a big night out.  Numerous people have filled this role in my lifetime, but none have lasted.  So why do I still have this longing – a longing God hasn’t met?  

I wonder if He can fill it, if He’s designed to?  Nothing is impossible for Him, but I wonder if He allows certain voids in our lives to encourage us to pursue earthly relationships.  It’s not just “Me + You vs. the world”.  I believe He’s created room in our hearts for others, otherwise I’d be content in Him alone. 

So where are these friendships, true-blue ones that remain despite circumstances, that don’t fade away?
 

And where, Father, are theirs?