See

I'm pretty much a year in now.

I look back at the girl I was last July,

a fresh faced dreamer,
a blithe cupcake decorating barista,

still so unfamiliar to sorrow,

to human suffering.

I knew heartbreak.

I knew sadness.

I knew let-down.

But I had never let true suffering get close to me.

Since interning at a domestic violence shelter

I have come face-to-face with human suffering,

I've come to experience trauma second-hand.

I've let sadness penetrate my heart,

I've held hands with hatred,

I've looked bitterness in the eyes.

And it has take its toll on me.
Depression has become something I understand
beyond books, diagnoses, and symptoms.

Sometimes I get to the end of the month,
I look at my stats, numbers attached
to women I have begun to believe in,
and I realize what it takes.

Each session it takes courage to get close,
bravery to poke the soft places that bring tears,
and authenticity to let go of my own expectations.

Counseling isn't about helping others,

it isn't about making someone better than before.

Not exactly.

It's holding onto secrets without giving out judgement.

It's being safe enough to allow discovery.

It's marrying truth and trust in a way that brings vulnerability.

If I thought I could trust the process and come out unscathed I was wrong.
I've had to let go of naivety and hold on to hope.
I've had to see myself for who I am not,
and accept myself for who I am.

I would like you to see this me.
I began the slow walk towards my true self years ago,
and this blog played a huge role in that.

I can't ask my clients to be vulnerable without practicing it myself.
So here I am, blogging, letting myself be seen.
Because I can't stop believing that it is our stories, heartbreaks, and victories
that bring about belonging, connection, and love for one another.

Faint-hearted

I had no clue

how difficult, stripping, life altering this journey would be.

And I'm afraid I won't make it,

not the way I'm going.

I've been steadily pulling away.

Hiding.

I don't want you to see that I'm barely making it,

that this process is tearing up 22 years of structures,

that I am afraid I will not make a good fit as a counselor,

that my weak arms cannot and will not be able to hold others.

And I realize now that this is where I have faltered,

in trying to do this alone, 

pushing on in my own strength.

So let me take this chance to say,

Graduate school has become nothing short of the hardest thing I have ever done,

and I am completely intimidated by the idea of failing.

This so called process has stripped away my pride, my safety-nets, my routine thinking,

and it has left me feeling so much weaker, unsure, and discouraged.

Counseling others is nothing like I thought it would be.

Looking into the face of the bruised, scarred, and desperate 

is much more intense than I ever imagined.

Balancing on the beam of caring too much 

and not caring enough is exhausting.

I don't want you to see,

but I know you do.

I've been getting texts and calls.

People are praying for me.

I'm on their minds.

I seem to be in a "bad place"

They are worried.

And I find myself responding to all their care in bitterness.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry for hiding, it takes so much more effort.

So here's the truth. 

I'm struggling. 

I'm doubting.

I'm afraid.

I consciously know I'm not alone.
My classmates feel similarly,
but it take so much effort to explain what we are going through.

But I need others. God and friends and you.

Because I will never make it if I think I can do it alone.

Celebrating love.

As most everyone knows or will now know,

February is my favorite.

I've loved celebrating love

since elementary school 

when Valentines day looked like sleepovers,

extra candy, and craft time.

I still have my top 5 Valentines Cards

stuffed in a box somewhere in my closet.

Adults roll their eyes, 

or profess their hatred for Valentines day

all the time.

But if you think about it,

it's a day to consciously celebrate loving others...

which is a commandment, and a theme with Jesus.

One thing God has been teaching me about love lately,

is that it should be done out of freedom.

I would have said I love others often.

I give up myself, my time, my priorities all the time.

To make someone happy.

To keep someone pleased.

To stay away from conflict.

But that's not really love.

Because in the end I feel used,

bitter, and all the more selfish.

Love should be done out of freedom,

not force.

For me that looks like setting boundaries,

looking inward to  check my motivations,

asking for God's love to fill my life,

not my own paled version.

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  

If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body up to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing." 

1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Back.

It has been so long since I wrote anything.

I wish to excuse my absence to grad school, business, the holiday rush.

But in reality, it's because I lost myself.

I couldn't find congruency and genuineness.

So I didn't write.

Losing yourself happens sneakily,

behind your back.

And you're always losing yourself to something,

someone.

But the tradeoff only left me empty,

and ultimately alone.

Because when we give up who we are,

we lose nearly everything.

I'm back
by circumstance, not by choice,

(which is an amazing thing I call grace).

Who knows how long I would have exhausted myself

running on a path I never belonged,

faking my way.

No, I was just a shiny Christian girl

who gave everything she had to people, friends, and job.

I was a rule-follower and I wanted people around me to be happy.

How is that a dangerous equation?

Oh, believe me.

It can be.

But the good thing about losing yourself
is that the process allows you to pick
which pieces you want back,
and which ones need to be lost forever.

I want to be a genuine follower of Christ,
a girl who gives up everything for the sake of the Gospel.
I want to love others in a way that feeds freedom, not compromise.
And I want to accept Grace in a way that fosters self-acceptance.

It's my process. I hope it helps yours.

Fearful.

I get very tired of running in circles.

But here I am again, trying to let go of my fear

so I can hold on to love.

We are learning "Deep Meaning" in counseling this week,

and what I'm finding is that a lot of our setbacks 

come from this foundation of fear.

Fear of failure.

Fear of loss.

Fear of regret.

Fear of condemnation.

And gosh, those are so huge for me.

I only want to give myself to the things, the people

I know won't let me down.

The ones who won't hurt me.

But honestly, living in that fear has only cost me.

Isolating, Withdrawing, Denying,

my fears have only kept me from living openly.

I sometimes pursue perfection, 

but that is such a cold box to live within. 

And to try to control my own safety is to 

stop trusting in the God who is capable of picking me back up. 

I want to live out of the only true safety,

I want to be fortified with the love of God in my soul,

because then I can take risks and give my love, my heart, myself, to others.

Each of us pays a heavy price for our fear of falling flat on our faces. It assures the progressive narrowing of our personalities and prevents exploration and experimentation. As we get older, we do only the things we do well. There is no growth in Christ Jesus without some difficulty and fumbling. If we are going to keep on growing, we must keep on risking failure throughout our lives . . . -- B. Manning

Speak

There are so many words.

The ones I want to say,

the ones I feel deeply within,

the ones I want to share.

And I think them, feel them.

Strongly.

But I am afraid of the out loud,

of the offering,

of the giving away,

of the secrets spoken.

They are safer within.

A long time ago I thought God was asking me to speak,

to write and touch young ears with words.

Like Moses, Jeremiah,

I doubted my own words.

Speaking, like healing and forward movement,

takes a lot of courage.

"Do not say, 'I am only a youth;
for all to whom I send you,
you shall go,
And whatever I command you,
you shall speak.
Do not be afraid of them.
For I am with you to deliver you,
declares the Lord."
Jeremiah 1:7,8

I too am a failure. 

I too have fled my calling.

I too don't believe in my own capacity to speak anymore.

I too need to return to faithfulness.

Secure

I've never been very good at hiding,

but I sure try to anyways.

I'm learning so many things about myself as I 

"open the door to my own therapy"

in my counseling program

Like my desperate need for approval,

and my surprisingly terrible communication skills.

Looking forward is scary, intimidating,

and it's starting to look pretty lonely.

I've spent much of my life beside someone,

searching for approval in opposite sex relationships.

Most of them have ended,

and that's a struggle for me.

Especially when I get caught up in comparison 

and the silly game of asking why God is good to everyone except me.

But then I catch a glimpse of the Kingdom,

of God's prevailing love for me,

and the opportunity to be satisfied in Him.

I read this article and was blown away by these words:

"But I want to be married. I pray to that end every day. I may meet someone and walk down the aisle in the next couple of years because God is so good to me. I may never have another date and die an old maid at 93 because God is so good to me. Not my will but his be done." -Paige Benton Brown

What if I could speak such words with conviction.

What if it became okay for me to stop searching,

to see the value and opportunity in where I am.

What if I let myself be free to be God's and no one else's.

What if I remembered that he offers

Beauty for Ashes

Joy for Mourning

Belonging for Loneliness

Security for Desperation

(Isaiah 61)