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Scared and Sacred and Getting Over Ourselves

I was reminded today that scared and sacred are almost the same word…and often the same experience. I asked my genius-girl, “Did you hate today?”

 “No.”

 “Was today hard?”

 “Yes.”

She makes eye contact. We see glass-clear reflections of ourselves.  

 I’m so glad she didn’t hate this scared, sacred day. We broke it down today. The elements of speaking, communicating, why God gave us words and voices. And specific circumstances where talking is necessary. We both have much going on in our brains. And we both only let out a fraction of it.  

I told my brilliant, beautiful girl I had some hidden years. I call them junior high. Who knew all those hidden days would be so relevant? Who knew I would draw from them often and reference that time again, again. A sort of testimony. Bulbs under snow. The frozen ground, the not wanting to become…was part of the becoming. Those hidden years? They weren’t about me. They were bigger than me.

Through the years, students have told me that their goal of fill-in-the-blank was too hard. Too hard? So I hold out my sweat-drenched shaky icicle hands for them to see. I show them stains of sweat. I line up the pill bottles in a neat little row.   

“Even you?” They ask. “Why?”

“Because speaking to you and teaching you is a worthwhile, purposeful thing. And it makes me nervous”  

I made the confidence of so many girls my mission. Now they write me to say they are studying abroad, they are running marathons, they are working for dream companies, they are making new friends, they are stepping outside their own boxes. They are doing a hundred things I’m still too afraid to do.

So when I hear a girl make noises in that squeaky, I’m-too-afraid-to-breathe-because-I-don’t-know-if- I- deserve- air kind of way…that voice scrapes my heart.  

I will fight for you against that hesitation and inferiority. I will push. But I will not push in a way that breaks you and makes you want to crumple to the floor in a heap. I’m proof of plenty of tactics that didn’t quite work.

In college, an education professor made me yell as loud as I could and told me to practice my teacher voice while I was driving in my car. I hope I busted his dear little eardrum. After class, I rolled my eyes. I guess he didn’t know I led basketball cheers, sang solos, performed on stages, blared, resounded, boomed. You know, in the name of theatre.

But he did know, he must have known that some deep part of me still did not believe I had any merit. I did not believe in everyday, daily-life me. “You apologize too much,” he said. “Why are you always apologizing?”

I caught myself apologizing a few days ago. I was positive peer-pressured into posing for the flower shop’s sister company clothing store photo shoot.

 “But I’m pasty winter-white! My hair will be messy unless it’s professionally smoothed and straightened! I have an underbite and don’t smile right! My cheeks still have babyfat! My triceps are flabby! I have no boobs and a rear that is too bootylicious for pattered skinny jeans! My sister’s an actual model…let’s wait until next month when she visits over spring break and she will rock these outfits! I’m out of the habit of wearing foundation!”

(Side note: Life feels more about survival than sparkle and gloss here in the tundra, more functional than feminine. The husband prefers au natural and I have zero people to compete with/compare myself to because the tundra is not located in Edwards County. So that’s what I mean when I say Girl is plumb out of the habit).

I mentally continued on my self-destructive rampage, “I never learned proper eye shadow application! My nail polish is always chipped! I’m bad at being a girl! I’m only 5’4”! Out of a hundred senior picture poses, I only have one photo that wasn’t awkward! I’m like Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights who doesn’t know what to do with his hands!”

Then I realized it’s not about me. It was about letting the customers see how the clothes fit. And about helping the company. And that’s bigger than my hang-ups and hitches. And why was I apologizing for natural in the first place?

Let’s stop apologizing, shall we?

For who we are, for what we do, for what we look like when we don't try or we do try, for being women, for having voices, for having thoughts, for having opinions.

 

Stop being scared little birds.

I think God wants us to get over ourselves.

Because the scared experiences are also the sacred ones.

the good stuff

Apple blue cheese salad with grilled chicken, Auntie Nancy’s manicotti from Vinny’s, when friends know you need a text or an email or a message (my friends have the best, God-wink, God-inspired timing), snowflake mochas, white chocolate mochas, fancy cupcakes, new worship songs, Friday night breakfast dates at Stella’s (and Friday night breakfasts at home). I love cooking together. I feel lonely in a kitchen without two or more people. Kitchens are for dancing. And romance. Bacon, biscuits, sausage, eggs, and pancakes at midnight and coffee at the perk of morning. Mother-in-law advice and soul sessions with favorite friends elbow-deep in sudsy water while scrubbing pans. My best memories are made in kitchens. sister chats, Pitch Perfect, the encouragement from readers who value vulnerability, a haircut finally, gardening plans, fishing trip plans, The show “Restaurant: Impossible,” books (currently reading Praise the Human Season, Mended, and Her Fearful Symmetry), Isaiah 43:19, pilates, new bras (and throwing the ratty ones away), homemade blueberry muffins with butter, new books hanging on my doorknob(!), eos lip balm, matte neutral nail polishes, the Wisconsin/Minnesota hills (but not the frigid tundra temps), Mayo Clinic’s professionalism and thoroughness and service, his comfort, and His comfort, too.  

Lot's Wife

I received my “important tax document” in the mail from Reitz Memorial High School a few days ago. I gasped. I remembered. Exactly a year ago, I moved eight hours north after teaching my very last January. A year ago? Already? Only? I often think about those change-of-the-semester students I only knew for one month. I hope they understand why I was so guarded and did not invest in them as I should have. I hope the students who still write me know how much they are loved. How sometimes it’s too hard to respond. I think about my children who are seniors. My babies who will be seniors next year. My AP and Themes class young adults who are graduating college. And I’m still stuck in a love affair with their brains and creativity, their human stories and their souls.

Memorial High School was not Sodom or Gomorrah. Other than a couple of perverted boys who took pictures up my skirt, some bullies and some mean girls all high schools are allotted, a former principal who drove us all mad, and a few classes straight out of Hades, I know I can find more than ten righteous people in that place. Hundreds more.  

 But God’s plan was to take me to a different land with my husband, a foreign strange land with different opportunities. And I am the nameless wife. Because I lusted after a former life I made an idol. In looking back, I turned into a pillar. A statue of salt. Unmoving. Stuck.

In the book Mended by Angie Smith, the author dropped a pitcher on the floor. On purpose. Then she hot-glued the pieces back together. The result wasn’t pretty, but the pitcher was mended. Shattered and mended and changed.

Changed. When one is a frozen salt pillar, one has plenty of time to think. So I thought about how I’ve changed. And what it means to be a wife.

I learned how to infuse gratitude into each little granule of salt-statue-me.

I never liked that Lot guy. He never tried to shake his wife back to life. My own husband? He would have knocked down the pillar. Collected every particle, every tiny grain. He would have poured the remnants in his pocket for safekeeping before fleeing. Leave no comrade behind. Even one appearing lifeless. Even in spite of my sin. Even when I’m wild-eyed, all fight and flight and stumbling sideways and looking back.        

But we journeyed forward. I put all the pieces of me back together best I could with masking tape and an old half dried-out glue stick. I have many rough places. Cracks. Holes. Gaps. They allow light in; they let love and soul and honesty and truth pour out. And sometimes I dump out a little salt from my shoes, shake out a little salt still stuck in my hair. As a reminder that I am seasoned by so much grace.         

My Favorite Books (List your own favorites in the comment section)

The Help Kathryn Stockett
Traveling Mercies Anne Lamott
Grace Eventually Anne Lamott
The Glass Castle Jeanette Walls
Me Talk Pretty One Day David Sedaris
Lord of the Flies William Golding
Great Expectations Charles Dickens
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
Little Bee Chris Cleave
The Red Tent Anita Diamont
The Dovekeepers Alice Hoffman
Educating Esme  Esme Raji Codell
Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston
One Thousand Gifts Ann Voskamp
Tuesdays with Morrie Mitch Albom
The Forest for the Trees Betsy Lerner
Writing Down the Bones Natalie Goldberg
On Writing Stephen King
Hamlet William Shakespeare

Favorite Life Quotes (Please add your own favorites in the comment section)

credit via marcandangel.com

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” --Howard Thurman

"Unless it's mad, passionate, extraordinary love, it's a waste of your time. There are too many mediocre things in life. Love shouldn't be one of them." --from Dream for an Insomniac

 
"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that was not life, and not when I had come to die discover that I had not lived."--Henry David Thoreau 

 “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." --Frederick Buechner

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set it free" --Michelangelo  

"Be daring, be different, be impractical;
be anything that will assert integrity of
purpose and imaginative vision against the
play-it-safers, the creatures of the
common place, the slaves of the ordinary."
--Cecil Beaton

"We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we don't need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don't fire cannons to call direction to their shining- they just shine." --Dwight L. Moody

"Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all of your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality...Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who think it is easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing." --Muhammad Ali

"Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake." --Victor Hugo

          " People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.

            If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.

            If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway.

           If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.

            What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.

            If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.

            The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.

         Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway.

         In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway."

 --Mother Teresa

Free at Last, Free at Last

Not everyone likes it when I put my heart on a plate.

I had an epiphany a few days ago after my mother made me mad and, immediately, a nosebleed streaked down my face and puddled on the floor. I think maybe I don’t communicate or experience emotions correctly. I believe this hypothesis even more because while reading the first chapter of Unglued by Lysa Terkhuerst for a Bible study, I still couldn’t understand why the cover has a raging crazy woman bent over and screaming into a bag. Who gets that angry? Well, I think I do. I just don’t know how to get it out, so my body sweats and freezes and trembles and hurts and bleeds and panics and vomits. So. Attractive.

In high school, I often wished I would die and hoped someone would care enough to go through my stacks of journals and finally understand me. An unlocking of an entire soul. They would read everything I couldn't say. (And then all of my little poems that didn't make sense would get published and I'd be known as a little psycho Emily Dickinson).

Then along the way I realized we don't have to take our truth to our graves.

I will not apologize for the truth. I don’t write for shock value. I don’t write deep family secrets to disgrace and destroy. I write because I don’t like façades. I’m very tired of being careful, of being guarded. My gorgeous model-sister poses for pictures. I refuse to pose in life.

My sister told me to keep being raw. She said if I went back to writing sweet cliché stuff that made people gag, she would punch me in the face. "Be the real you. I do not expect anything else. I will not accept anything less." Yeah, she's a pretty cool sister. She also has a vicious right hook. So I have to do what she says.  

When we are all on our deathbeds we will regret words we didn’t say.We will wish we would have cut out all the crap and lived much more authentically even if it was hard at the time. So I choose to vulnerably go into the arena again. For you. For me. For all of us. And just as my body purges pain, my mind and heart are cleansed by words. And so are yours—I know this fact is true. I have a dream someday you'll wake up. I know the deepest part of all of you knows truth sets free. So live free. At last.