Trusting God to work in the gap

I  got an email yesterday with an Advent devotion. The concept of Advent is a new one to me as it wasn’t emphasized in my previous denomination, so I read it with particular interest. It said, in part, “For Advent, pray, work, speak out about the gap between the way the world ought to be and the way it is, while trusting God to work also in the gap." 

I often have a hard time with that gap. I have a very visceral reaction to the judgment, intolerance, and hatred I see in this world. It’s discouraging. It’s  heartbreaking. Sometimes it’s really tempting to just say what’s the point because nothing I do is really going to change anything.  There are some people whose minds are never going to be changed. It becomes easy to doubt whether things will ever get better. Whether what we do or what we say really makes a difference. 

But I think ultimately we have to trust. Trust God to use the seemingly small things we do to serve a very big purpose. To turn our two fish and five loaves of bread into enough bounty to feed thousands. To work in the gap even as we are so busy pointing it out and wondering if it will ever be bridged. Moving forward in the ways that we can, even in the midst of our heartbreak and disillusionment. 

To know that God is in all of this even when we don’t see or feel it. To know that even when our hearts are breaking and our spirits are wounded, God is at work. In the gap between where the world is and where it ought to be. To know that if we choose to work beside God, we will be blessed as we bless. And our offerings that seem so insubstantial will be used by God to feed and nourish many. 

The beauty in the gray

I took this photo last week when we were in Galveston, and of all the photos I took while we were there, I think it’s my favorite. I was looking at it yesterday and I noticed that it looks like I converted a color photo to black and white because it’s all in gray scale. But that’s actually just how the photo naturally looks, all in gray. It’s all in gray because it was a foggy and overcast day, with a dull  dreary sky and no sun in sight. Which, truthfully, is the kind of day I like the least. I’m a blue sky and sunshine kind of girl. 

Days like yesterday, where there’s not a cloud in the sky, and the color of the sky is a blue that you can almost feel. A day where the sun shining on my skin literally feels like the touch of God to me. A day where sometimes I just sit in the car for a few minutes or stand outside before I head in to my office, just to breathe in the air, and feel the sun’s warmth, and savor the creation God made. Just a gift of a day.

But the day I took that photo wasn’t that kind of weather day at all. And so I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about this photo that draws me the way it does. I thought maybe it’s the iconic nature of a boy and his dog. Maybe it’s the pleasure pier in the background. Maybe it’s the contrast of the light of the water against the darkness of the sand. There has to be something that is drawing me to this gray photo. Something other than the gray.  Because, you see, I’m a full color kind of girl.

Then it hit me. Sometimes the days that are gray, the times that are gray, are where the deep beauty lives. Often the gray times are where we grow the most. In the absence of the sun. In the absence of the blue skies. In the absence of the warmth, and in the presence of the cold and the dreary and the gray. And it’s those gray skies, those gray times, that help us to fully appreciate the days with the azure blue skies. With the sun that warms our skin and touches our souls. We take for granted the clear skies without the cloudy ones with which to compare. We take for granted the good times in our lives without the bad. The sunny days are the ones that soothe us. But the gray ones are the ones that form us.

So I’ve decided to make a print of this photo and hang it on my office wall.  Near two other photos I have prints of that both show a beautiful azure sky. So that I can remember that there is beauty too in the gray days. And that sometimes the blue looks a whole lot bluer when it’s up against the gray. But each is beautiful in its own unique way.

Practicing what heaven will look like

I was reading a book this past week written by two Methodist pastors, about the upcoming General Conference and the ramifications thereof for the church. Two of the things that they said as far as their hopes for the church moving forward stood out to me and I’ve been thinking about them since.

They are hoping for “A place where Methodists live out their unity in diversity and get an opportunity to practice what heaven will look like.” They go on to say “If we want people in our family, we need to stop tolerating them and start welcoming them, or else they will decide for themselves that this family is not for them.”

“A place where Methodists live out their unity in diversity and get an opportunity to practice what heaven will look like.” Isn’t that what the church, whatever the denomination, is supposed to look like but often doesn’t?  The church should be the place where people feel most loved, most accepted, and most valued. Instead it’s often the place where they feel that the least. The church should be the place where the spirit of God is so strong that it’s a tangible thing that you can literally feel. Sadly there are times it’s where that is felt the least. The church should be the place that most closely looks like what heaven will look like. It often looks less like that than any other place in this world.

The Christian church should be a group of people of differing skin color, genders, sexual identities and orientations, races, ethnicities, ages, and political beliefs, but united in the love of Christ and the love of each other. “Living out their unity in diversity and practicing what heaven will look like.” It’s so simple to say and so hard to live. I get it. I’m guilty too of thinking that people should think as I do and not always being very tolerant of those who believe differently. But truthfully, if everyone thought as I did, believed as I did, liked the same things I do, lived the way I live, this world would be an awfully boring place. The richness of life comes from the fact that we are all different. With our own unique gifts and talents that we bring. The trick is valuing those differences. Honoring those differences. Living out our unity in diversity. Practicing what heaven will look like.

Of all the things I know, I know that heaven is going to be a surprise to most of us. It’s probably not going to look like the churches most of us attend on Sunday mornings. It’s not going to look like our dining room table on Thanksgiving or on dinner party nights. It’s going to be a rainbow of colors, personalities, languages, denominations, and political beliefs. I think there are going to be people there that we don’t expect to be there. Because I think our human idea of grace isn’t always that of God.

I think part of practicing what heaven will look like is lived out in accepting and affirming others.  Not tolerating others who look different than us, or who believe different than us, or who act different than us, but truly accepting them. Not I love you but, just I love you. “If we want people in our family, we need to stop tolerating them and start welcoming them, or else they will decide for themselves that this family is not for them.” 

How many young people today are choosing not to spend their time in church?  Either because they don’t think it’s relevant to their lives or because they have seen too many examples of judgement, bias, intolerance dressed as Christian tolerance, or just plain hypocrisy. If our children who have grown up in the church see this and choose not to continue in their church family because of “tolerance” but lack of true welcome, how many other persons have left the church or never come in the first place because of their fear of being rejected, or judged, or simply “tolerated”? How many have been turned away or turned away because of too many expressions of love the sinner but hate the sin?

Tolerating someone and welcoming them are not at all the same thing. To tolerate someone is to say I love you, but... Welcoming someone is to say, with all sincerity, I love you and I’m glad you’re here and I affirm you as a child of God, made in the image of God and worthy of God’s love and of mine. 

That is the command that we have been given. To love others. To welcome the least of these. Those who are the same faith as us and those who aren’t. Those who look like us and those who don’t. Those with the same nationality, legal status, sexual orientation or identity, and tax bracket. And those who aren’t. Those who have absolutely nothing to offer to benefit us other than the following of the calling of Christ to minister to those in need. Whether we think they deserve it or not.

Our goal should be to have the most loving and welcoming church family on the block. A family who loves each other despite our differences. Who welcomes new members with open minds, open hearts, and open arms. Who truly believes the old adage that blood is thicker than water. Not through the blood of familial lineage but through the blood of Christ Jesus who died so that all of us might be brothers and sisters in God. Through his stripes. Through his scars. Through his wounds. Through his sacrifice. If God welcomed us into God’s family when we were so undeserving, who are we to withhold that welcome from others? Let us strive to grow our church families in love and in grace. In acceptance and affirmation. In diversity and in unity.

Let us practice each day what heaven will look like. In our own lives. In the lives of those we touch. Let us never stop striving to welcome new members to our family. As God loves us, let us love.  Above all else, let us love.

Erring on the side of love

When I was in law school, the church I attended had a presentation one Sunday. A young married couple, probably in their early 30’s, came to speak. He talked about the years he lived in what he described as a sinful homosexual lifestyle. And then he spoke of how he had been redeemed and healed of his sinful lusts and met and married the young lady he now called his wife. But after their marriage, he was diagnosed with AIDS, as was she. They were both mostly healthy at the time they spoke to us and I remember thinking what an amazing redemptive story they shared. Several years later, I heard he had left his wife and gone back to his homosexual lifestyle and ultimately both had died of AIDS. I remember thinking how sad it was that he had died away from God. 

I hadn’t thought about that presentation, or that couple, in years. Until a few months ago when I started reading more about the heartbreaking stories of LGBTQ people who have struggled with shame, confusion, and pain over their sexual orientation. It was then that I learned about conversion therapy. It was then I remembered that young couple and realized that was probably the experience the young man had been through that had convinced him for a time that he could deny who he was and be what others found acceptable of a young Christian man. 

And with the maturity I have gained over the past 25 plus years since then, and with the change of heart God has been working within me over the past 10 years or so, in my view of same sex attraction, I thought of that young couple again with sadness. But a sadness different than the one I first felt. 

The sadness now isn’t that the young man may have died far from God because of his sin. The sadness now is that the young man may have died not knowing how loved he was by God, because of the damaging message of judgment and intolerance he had heard his whole life. The sadness now is that the young lady died of a disease she should never have been exposed to because she  should have never been in the relationship she had been in with the young man, and wouldn’t have been, if he had just been allowed to be who God created him to be. 

I had the opportunity to go watch the movie Boy Erased last week. A movie about a boy much like the one I heard speak all those many years ago. A son of an evangelical conservative pastor, who upon coming out to his parents as being attracted to other men, was sent to conversion therapy to change him into the person his father felt God intended him to be. 

It was the most painful movie I have ever seen. It made me sad, angry, and sick, all at the same time. What made me so sad, angry, and sick wasn’t just the abuse this boy and more than 700,000 other LGBTQ youth in this country have been subjected to. 

What made me so sad, angry, and sick is the fact that for so many years, I bought into the lies that this therapy espoused. That same sex attraction is against God’s purpose. That it’s a result of family dynamics, childhood abuse, or is simply a voluntary lifestyle choice. That homosexuality is anything other than part of the perfect plan of God for God’s children. 

I am beyond grateful that God has changed my mind and changed my heart. At the end of my life, when I face God on God’s throne, I hope to be able to say that in all the times of my life where I didn’t know what  to do or how to think, that I always chose to err on the side of love. 

I pray that there will come a time when no LGBTQ person  ever has to experience the damaging message that they are anything other than exactly as God created them to be. Fearfully and wonderfully made. In God’s  image and with God’s perfect purpose. Until that time, I will continue to pray for God to open hearts and open minds. To replace judgment and intolerance with love, acceptance, and affirmation. To help people to see others as God sees them. As precious, cherished, made for love, and made to be loved. 

Being real with God

The sermon this morning was in part about being honest and real with God. Hearing that today after seeing this quote yesterday made me realize God was trying to make a point. God is good at that, I find. 

I have learned much in these last few months about being honest and real with other people. About being vulnerable by being transparent, and open, and honest, about both my joys and my struggles. This has been a blessing for some of you and made others of you very uncomfortable. Both reactions are understandable and okay. 

I have also learned a lesson  even more important than being vulnerable in my honesty and openness with other people. I have learned  so much about the sacredness of being vulnerable in my honesty and openness with God. 

In the past few months of working through deep layers of unresolved pain, grief, abuse, and shame, I have learned what it is to be honest and real with God.  And in that realness, I have been angry. So very angry at times. 

I have raged at God in the past 7 months more than at any previous time in my life. And you know what I have learned? God is big enough to handle all my rage. All my questions. All my fears. All my doubts. God is big enough to handle it all. 

And contrary to what I have always thought, God isn’t angered by those feelings. God’s reaction hasn’t been to smite me for my doubts. It hasn’t been to turn away from my anger. It’s been to pull me close. To hold me tight. To heal my wounds, settle my questioning spirit, comfort me in my fear, and ease my doubts. 

In my courage to be real with God, God has shown himself to be more real to me than at any other time in my life. 

We were asked in small group this morning if, as we learned more about God, we felt we knew more about God or less. The consensus was that the more we learn about God, the more we realize how much we don’t know. 

What a privilege it will be to spend the rest of my life learning more. Wrestling more. Wondering more. Loving more. 

What a privilege it is to be known by the God of the universe. Really known. To be cherished as a beloved child. What a privilege it is to be able to go to God in a real and authentic way in both the good times and the bad. And to know that God will walk with us through it all. 

And what a gift it is to be able to give that gift of love to others as it has been given to us. 

As we approach the season of Thanksgiving, I am so thankful that I serve a God who is real. And who wants me to be the same. With him and with others. 

The power of women

I’ve really been struck this week by what a gift it is that I am surrounded by so many amazing, giving, loving, and powerful women.

I had a brutal, physically and emotionally exhausting day in court on Wednesday. 16 hearings, 2 of them involving the death of a child, 2 others involving infants with traumatic brain injuries. The others filled with their own drama and sadness. What made the day more bearable, what makes all the days like that more bearable, were the amazing women that I get the opportunity to work with.

In the middle of all the drama and the heartbreak of that day, I had the opportunity to have lunch with three of my favorite female coworkers and friends. It’s what gave me the energy and the spirit to finish the rest of the day. It wasn’t so much the food that nourished me, but the companionship of other women with strong personalities but soft hearts.

At the end of the exhausting day, I went to the house of a dear friend who had just had surgery. I was able to spend the next 2 hours with her and another sweet friend, just being together. We cared physically for our wounded friend. But we also cared emotionally for each other. It was exactly what each of us needed after challenging weeks for all of us.

As I thought about the work day and the evening following, I realized that there is just something sacred about the relationships that women have with each other.  About the ways that they are able to hold each other up when one is down. The ways that they surround each other and protect each other in times of vulnerability.

In her book Of Mess and Moxie, Jen Hatmaker describes a time in her life when she was under serious attack for the stand that she and her husband took on affirming the LGBTQ community. She tells the story of how her friend sent her a photo of a herd of elephants along with a story of how female elephants surround their fellow females at such times as when they are giving birth or under attack by a predator. And that they protect her and they protect her offspring until such time as they can stand for themselves.

This is exactly what good female friends do for each other.  They surround each other.  They close ranks, and they stomp dirt, and they make noise. And they tell the world, if you want to mess with our friend, you have to mess with us first. There is little in this world more powerful or more terrifying than a woman protecting someone she loves.

There is also little in this world more heartbreaking to see than women judging other women for lifestyle choices that they make that don’t align with their own. As lifegiving as women have the ability to be, they also have an incredibly ability to be judgmental, and hurtful, and at times just totally mean.

I was listening to a podcast recently and they were talking about the story of Moses, but with the focus less on who Moses was than how he became to be who he was. They talked about how when he was born, his life would not have even been possible without some very important women who were not afraid to break the rules to do the right thing and to save his life.

The story begins with the defiance of Moses’ mother in placing him into the water in a basket and the defiance of Pharaohs daughter in choosing to save him, knowing what and who he was.

But what they did was so much more than that.  These two women, from totally different social statuses, worked together to save this child’s life. They broke the law to do it. They totally disregarded what they were supposed to do and they did instead what they ought to do.

How different would the story be without the bravery of those women and their willingness to do the right thing, setting aside any fear, cultural expectations, or personal differences.

What if instead of seeing the humanity of Moses’ mother and her heartbreaking plight, and choosing to take a stand to do something about it, Pharaoh’s daughter had turned in Moses’ mother? Likely her actions would have resulted in her death and the death of Moses. How different would the Old Testament look without the influence of Moses?

When women come together for a positive common cause, there is no human power greater. I have seen it in my own personal life, in my work life, and in the lives of the marginalized and the overlooked, time and time again. They set aside egos, personal agendas, and pride. They think outside the box.  Sometimes they just throw the box away. They don’t consider the rules, or the expectations, or the opinions of people who don’t matter.  They pull together to do what needs to be done because it needs to be done, without worry of anything else.

When women come together for a negative common cause, there is nothing more damaging or heartbreaking. Women have the power to cause great wounds in other women. I have seen it in my own personal life, in my work life, and in the lives of the marginalized and the overlooked, time and time again.

Let us recognize the power that we have as women.  Both the power to do great things. And the power to do very harmful things. Let us always choose to do what is great and what is right by other women. To do what lifts others up rather than tears them down.

I am beyond proud to have the opportunity to work with so many strong, amazing, loving, and fearless women. And to have so many of those same type of women in my personal life who love me and who love my children. This world, my life, and the lives of my family, are better and richer because of them.

 

Of holes and patchwork tapestries

A friend recently posted about her required but unwanted hysterectomy and the resulting inability to bear children, and the loss of the dream of the baby girl she has been dreaming about for years. She said that she was tired of people telling her she was lucky not to have kids. There was no comfort in that statement for her. There would be no comfort in that statement for any of my friends who have struggled with infertility. Neither is there comfort in saying God had other plans for you. You were meant to do bigger things or better things. Other things.

What’s wrong with just saying, man, that sucks and I am so sorry? I can’t do anything or say anything to make this better for you, but I love you. Why isn’t it okay to just acknowledge that sometimes life isn’t fair and doesn’t make sense and just really bites, without trying to find some shiny side of the pain?

I can’t tell you the amount of restraint it’s taken over the years to keep from throat punching some people over things they’ve said about the loss of my father when I was too young to have lost him. Yes, I know he’s in a better place. Yes, I’m glad he didn’t suffer long. Yes, it’s possible God was saving him from something bad in his life. Yes, I was lucky to have him for the time that I did. I get it. All of it. Really, I do. But quite frankly, that doesn’t help a bit. It never did. 

Sometimes we just have holes in our lives. Emptiness that can’t be totally filled. And no amount of platitudes or well-intentioned words of comfort are going to fill those holes.

All my life, I have heard the concept that we all have a God sized hole in our life that we may try to fill with other things like people, alcohol, drugs, material possessions, etc. but can only be ever filled with God. And that always sounded really nice. It doesn’t sound nice to me any more.

It doesn’t sound nice because I don’t think that my God’s purpose is just to fill my holes. God isn’t caulk. God is bigger than any hole. God fills every part of my life, including the parts that are whole rather than holes.

I don’t say this to minimize God’s ability to heal those holes, or to minimize our need for God. I absolutely believe that people have a need for God that won’t be satisfied by anything else. I absolutely believe that God can fill our holes and to make them like they never happened. But to say that God’s job is to fill our holes is, I think, to minimize all that God is. It isn’t that God can’t fill them because God certainly can do that with just a word. But I don’t know that filling those holes is always the purpose. I think that God uses those holes, and what God makes of them, to create something far greater and stronger and more beautiful than what was there before the hole.

And, truthfully, I don’t know why it is that we expect that all the holes in our lives have to be fully repaired. That they have to be filled, or need to be filled, or even are able to be filled. Sometimes we just have holes. The loss of a child, or a parent, or spouse, or a dream, leaves a hole that doesn’t ever fully fill in. These aren’t holes we want. But they are holes we have. And God uses those holes to make us beautiful in ways that we wouldn’t be without them.

Maybe the answer isn’t to expect for those holes to be filled back to where they were before the loss that caused them. Maybe the answer is to allow God to spin tapestries of love and giving and connection that creates a new cover for those holes. A cover that helps to protect what’s underneath as it’s healing but that acknowledges and honors that there’s a hole where there once wasn’t.

Maybe, just maybe, holes are okay, and so are the beautiful covers God makes for them. Maybe we should quit trying to fill those holes up ourselves. We should certainly stop trying to fill them for others. Maybe we should just recognize that they are there. And, if our wounded friends want our help with the weaving of their tapestries, we offer some brightly colored yarn, or fabric, or at times some industrial strength tape. But we should also recognize that sometimes they don’t want or need our help to fill their holes.  All they want from us is for us to say yes, I see your holes. They’re awfully big. I’m sorry they’re there. But I’m here to sit with you until you figure out what you want to do about them.

It’s possible to have holes and still be whole. And the tapestry covers that God creates for us, the patchwork masterpiece that he makes out of us, can make us beautiful.

 

It's okay to not be okay

I went with a super fun group of church friends last night to hear Jen Hatmaker. If you don’t know who she is, you’re missing out. She’s funny, and she loves Jesus, and she loves people, and she’s real. Her books make me both laugh and think, sometimes within the span of one page, and she has some of the most interesting and thought provoking people on her For the Love podcast each week.  So if you’re not familiar with her, run, don’t walk, to go check her out.

One of the things that she talked about last night was the concept of pain. I’m sure I’m about to totally butcher what she was trying to say, but my takeaway of what she said is that so many Christians think that suffering is something that we aren’t supposed to feel for very long. That we are supposed to get through it in a scripted amount of time without bogging people down in our pain. But what we are really supposed to do sometimes, the healthiest thing we can do, is to just sit in our pain. And to know that Jesus is there with us, every hour, every minute, every second. And that often our friends are right there too, surrounding us with their protection and their love, until Jesus has done the work of healing our hearts and we can step back into the fight again.

I blogged a few months ago about my own experiences of sitting on my pile of dust and ashes, waiting to heal. It’s not an easy place to be sometimes. The chairs aren’t as cushy, the floor isn’t as clean, and sometimes people aren’t very comfortable visiting you while you’re there. But it’s in those times that we often feel Jesus the most.

I think often we try to put on an appearance to the outside world that everything is okay, when really it isn’t. When people ask us how we are doing, we automatically say I’m fine, when the truth is we are falling apart.

Our Facebook posts and our Instagram photos show the good and happy snapshots of our lives, when the truth is there are at least 100 life snapshots of sadness or anger or shame for every 1 happy one that we post for the rest of the world to see.

Unless what is happening to us is something that is universally accepted as a hard time, such as the death of a loved one, we are hesitant to say that we aren’t okay. Even in those situations, we only feel comfortable being honest about our grief for a short time before we feel the pressure, either externally or internally, to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and move on.

Why do we fear being vulnerable to admit that things aren’t as good as we want them to be? As they appear to be? As others expect them to be?

It’s okay to not be okay.

I have learned in these past months by working through my own history of shame and grief, reading the works of experts on shame and vulnerability, listening to the wise words of those who know what it is to love God in all God’s forms, and through my own experiences with opening my mouth and my heart to share my struggles and pain with all of you, that there can be great beauty in vulnerability. That there can be great connection to others by being real about your struggles and your pains. That there can be great healing of deep wounds by exposing them to the light and to the air. And I’ve learned that Jesus is never closer to me than when I am hurting, and when I am scared, and when I feel most alone.

It’s okay to not be okay.

If you are in a place today where you’re not okay, be it your physical health, your mental health, relationship problems with your spouse or your children, your job, demons from your past, struggles with substance abuse, or whatever is making you not okay, know that you are not alone.

It’s okay to not be okay.

Find someone that you trust to be real with. Someone you can take off your mask of perfection in front of. Someone to sit with you and hold your hand while you’re on your pile of dust and ashes. And find a group of someones who will put you in the middle of their circle, and surround you with their care, and their love, and their protection, until you’re strong enough to step back into the fight.

It’s okay to not be okay.

It’s not only okay to ask for help when you aren’t okay, but it’s faithful. You may be surprised by who shows up to be your rear guard or to go ahead of you. God will be there. Because that’s what is promised us in Psalm 34:18. The message version of the Bible reads this way: “If your heart is broken, you’ll find God right there; if you’re kicked in the gut, he’ll help you catch your breath.” God shows that promise to us every day, through God’s presence, and through the presence of others, when we are only brave enough to admit that things aren’t as shiny as we pretend them to be.

It’s okay to not be okay.

When the tears run down the page

Mike and I went to see A Star is Born the other day.  It’s a deeply emotional movie on many levels. The woman who was seated next to me was going through tissue like she owned stock in Kleenex. I sat there with dry eyes.

I stood next to a hospital bed and held the hand of a dying child this past month. And I didn’t shed a tear.

In September, I wrote a blog post about my childhood sexual abuse that caused numerous people I know to tell me that they had tears streaming down their faces in the reading, and I cried not one.

Two years ago, I spent more than 9 months deeply worried about Aaron’s health and wellness. And even then, although my stress level was off the charts, my tears were rare.  

I watched that same sweet boy walk across the stage this past June and give an incredibly moving and powerful valedictory speech, and despite the fact that I was proud beyond measure, I didn’t cry. Other members of his family cried. Family friends cried. But I, his mother, did not.

I don’t know if I cried when I was a little girl or not. There’s honestly much about my childhood I don’t really remember. Trauma tends to punch holes in your memory, I’ve found. I remember crying when my dad died. But not the deep, emotional, and healing, sobbing tears that I wanted to be able to cry. I don’t know even then if I had the ability to cry in that way, but if I did, I didn’t allow myself to do so. I kept those in because I thought I needed to be strong for my mom. So the only tears I allowed myself were the ones that ran silently down my face. And since his death, my tears have been infrequent and, quite frankly, hard to come by.

There are times that I may watch a movie or see a television show that strikes a chord and I will get a little teary and maybe even cry a few tears then.

Sometimes I get choked up in a jury trial when I have been advocating my heart out for days and my emotions are high, my anger is activated, and my exhaustion is strong.

There have been a few juvenile and CPS children clients that have made me cry because I have felt so powerless to be able to help them out of what were frustrating, painful, and totally unfair situations. Most often those tears came from anger that I didn’t otherwise know how to express.

But when it comes to events in my own life, I don’t cry. I wish I could. I am jealous of my friends who cry when they are sad, hurt, angry, or overwhelmed. I told a good friend recently that she has cried the tears for me that I was unable to cry for myself. I am grateful to her for that. But envious too. 

I don’t know that it’s healthy to bottle up emotion in the ways that I have. I’ve had numerous CPS child clients over the years who have been cutters. Typically, people who cut themselves do so in order to allow themselves to feel something. When they can’t cry, they bleed. I’m not a cutter in the literal sense, but in ways, that’s what I am doing when I write. I am a metaphorical cutter, I think. Which is probably why my writing is at times so raw.

It’s not just words that I pour out onto the page, but my tears, and at times my blood.

I heard the following said in a recent workshop I attended: “You build personality to save you from childhood wounds. It’s like a cast. It helps to protect and to heal, but if left on too long, it causes what is underneath to atrophy.” What I was trying to protect as a child was my emotional self. My feelings. I put a cast on my heart to allow it to heal. To protect it.  To keep it from being further harmed. But that cast also kept me from being able to feel. 

I’ve been peeling off pieces of that cast, one strip at a time, over these past months. Some of that peeling has occurred in my writing of this blog. And what’s underneath isn’t always pretty. Sometimes it’s bleeding, or tender, or raw.   

It’s not just words that I pour out onto the page, but my tears, and at times my blood.  

For those of you who read my blog and have to take breaks from time to time because it makes you cry, I’m sorry. 

For those of you who worry about me because of the pain that you read in my writing, don’t worry. Worry if I stop writing. I write because I feel. I write so that I can feel. I write so that I can peel away the remainder of the cast that is keeping me from fully feeling the things I want and need to feel. The good things and the bad. I write so that I can heal.

It’s not just words that I pour out onto the page, but my tears, and at times my blood.

Thank you to all of you for walking this journey with me. For loving me, and supporting me, wounds and all.  For wiping away the tears and the blood from the page until such time as I heal enough that there’s no longer reason to bleed. And the tears can come from my eyes rather than my keyboard. 

I got to see the world from the shoulders of giants

Yesterday was All Saints Day at church. Being relatively new to the Methodist church, this is a new event for me. We had the chance to bring photos of loved ones that we have lost to honor and to remember. The people that immediately came to mind were my dad and my Granny Brewer. But I couldn’t bring the pictures. I just couldn’t. And during church and the rest of the day, I just felt melancholy. 

Grief is like that. Sometimes it hits you at unexpected times no matter how long it’s been since the initial loss. I was telling my Disciple Bible Study leader how I was feeling and why. He told me he had heard an expression that morning that he thought might mean something to me. “I got to see the world from the shoulders of giants.” 

In the eyes of the world, my dad wasn’t a giant. Neither was my grandmother. But they were giants to me. They both had such a powerful influence on my life. And losing the both of them within one years time left a huge hole in my life.

I got to see the world from the shoulders of giants.

At the end of Peter and the Starcatcher, the show Melissa one act play did this last spring, there is a line where Molly is talking to her father about her sadness over leaving Peter Pan. She says “It’s supposed to hurt. That’s how you know it meant something.”

I am so grateful that it meant something. Even though it hurt to lose them. Even though it still hurts to not have them. 

I got to see the world from the shoulders of giants.

I wonder if they had any idea the influence they had on me and on others? I think if you had asked that question of them, they would’ve looked at you in amazement or even possibly like you were under the influence of something you shouldn’t be. Which makes me think, how many people am I influencing without ever knowing it? How many people are you? What will our legacies be? Will we carry the legacy of giants? Not because of the money we made, or the things that we built, or the societal influence we wielded, but because of the character we displayed,  and the love that we showed. 

I think we all have the capacity and the opportunity to be giants. In the lives of our children and our grandchildren. In the lives of those we know and even those we do not. Our influence goes far beyond what most of us imagine. Let us honor that influence. Let us be aware that each day we build the legacy that we will someday leave. Let’s make it a good one. To those whose lives we touch. Whether we know it or not. 

Let us be giants for others. And show them the world from our shoulders.