This is My City

Posted in Uncategorized by

This is my city. The city where a mouse makes dreams come true and the rides of Harry Potter thrill relentlessly. Dolphins dance for crowds and a whole world is created of Legos. It is also the city where hate took 49 lives. One man took judgment into his hands and broke the happiest place on earth.

This is my city, and it is the City Beautiful.

prayfororlando

Several times a week I drive by a club named Pulse. The streets where I often work at Starbucks are lined with rainbow banners. I see two men eating breakfast outside, their dog sleeping at their feet. Two women play at the park with their child. Our pharmacist, who might as well be family, tells us his partner is doing well in the banking field. The LGBT community in Orlando is strong. There is freedom, acceptance, strength and support.

This community has very specific faces to me. It is my pharmacist, my former hairdresser, the server at the Thai tea shop. It is my barista, my favorite checker at Target and one of my daughter’s friends from school.

Those faces are filled with fear and grief today. Hatred was taken to a whole new level.

On Sunday, just hours after hearing the news, I am in the parking lot of Target. The big red bus is parked in its usual spot. Only today it doesn’t have to offer the usual movie tickets to get the donations it needs. The temperature rises to near 100, and literally hundreds fill the parking lot waiting to give blood. They will be there for hours, but none will leave. The City Beautiful will care for its own.

Twenty-four hours later, I make my usual drive to buy meat and veggies. There is no avoiding the helicopters buzzing overhead. Pulse is only a few blocks away. My city has been invaded. Cameras and reporters are everywhere. They have set up camp at the end of the blocked-off road. Geraldo is reporting from the hospital where the surgeons fixed my back and my friend fights cancer. The place feels personal to me, and it’s being invaded.

I drive home from my market, and I pass the Medical Examiner’s Office. At the time, 24 families still hadn’t heard the news they both needed and didn’t want. Crowds are gathered by the door, and it just feels too much. The weight of grief is so very heavy. These families are not abstract people mentioned on the news. I see them standing in the hot sun just 20 feet from me. Wanting to wake up from a nightmare.

If I am honest, I have to confess I have thought often about the likelihood of hearing the news we heard Sunday morning. Sixty million people visit my city every year. Fear seems the most crippling monster to a city committed to creating a fairytale reality.

But I never thought it would look like this. I never thought such explosive evil would be unleashed at a bar. I can not fathom such hate.

This is my city. A terrorist attacked the very streets where I do life. He tried to stir hate, but my city won’t stand for it. We will not let his incomprehensible actions define us.

We will love.

We will give blood until the big red bus closes its doors. We will stand with the LGBT community and tell them they are loved. We will cry with our neighbors over the loss of innocence our city has suffered. We will carry the financial burdens of families who can not pay to put their lost ones in the ground. We will cook and clean and light candles and sing and pray.

The City Beautiful will shine even brighter, but with a rawness one can not know without walking through the unthinkable. Our service and kindness and love will unite our city beautiful. We have faced evil together, but we will be the victors.

This is my city.

 

 

Courage

Posted in Musings, Upside Down Kingdom by

I ate with a man this week who has spent his life writing on the behalf of others. Pulitzer honored him with the most prestigious award in his field, and yet he is honest in his self-hatred.

He can not forgive the man he used to be. That unforgiveness stops faith cold.

Typewriter

Genuinely, he asks, “What is faith? Really.”

Five years ago his daughter was born at 23 weeks gestation and spent six months in the NICU. Every day for weeks on end he did not know if he would ever hold her outside the walls of the hospital.

“Your faith isn’t like Hallmark is it?”

No. It’s not. There are no bows and no anesthesia. My faith is real, but so is the pain of life.

He talked of the book he got from a colleague while his daughter was fighting for life. The colleague had lost a child and determined there was no purpose. He wrote an entire book about the futility of human life.

The silver-haired writer in front of me couldn’t accept it.

“I don’t get it. In my mind, God isn’t an entity. It’s the place where meaning exists.”

The silver-haired man desperately wants answers that give purpose to his pain. It is the only way to hold his fragile world together.

My heart breaks. I want desperately for this man to know hope. I want him to know somehow this crazy spinning ball is not for naught. I want him to know the God of the Universe died so he could be forgiven. I want him to know there is One who cares infinitely about every second of the pain and anguish of watching his one-pound daughter fight for her life.

I have heard too much depravity in these few days. My heart can’t take one more picture. It needs rest. It needs to wake with the hope of the watchman waiting for the morning.

The silver-haired writer does have something I envy. His courage of heart calls me to a deep place. He does not step back from the pain of others. He enters in. He drinks deeply from our shared humanity. And yet he does not have the hope of eternity.

I don’t know how he does it.

I have that hope, the knowledge of the infinite love of God, and my heart still shrinks.

The depths of depravity feel too much for me on this night.

I pray for the silver-haired writer, and I pray for myself. I pray for belief and for courage.

 

To the Well-Intentioned

Posted in Depression, Musings, Random by

I know you mean well.

Really, you do. You desire to be a voice of encouragement and hope.

But sometimes well-intentioned words can feel the very opposite of hope and encouragement. They can heap shame and condemnation.

I know my hard can be just as confusing for you as it is for me. I get that you don’t know what to say. I often don’t know what to say either. Most of the time I don’t need answers though. I just need your presence. I just need to hear you say you care about my pain.

CoupleBack

To the well-intentioned who said, “Thankfulness is the answer,” I know you were trying to help. I know you wanted good for me. A thankful heart didn’t make depression go away though. Your words made me wonder what I was doing wrong because as hard as I tried to be thankful, I couldn’t escape my darkness. They also made me question the validity of what I was feeling. Was I not suppose to feel that depression absolutely sucked? Was I to be thankful for the imbalance that made me feel I was going crazy? I can not bring myself to fake being thankful for that.

To the well-intentioned who said, “You’re over-spiritualizing,” I know you wanted health for me. The only thing I had at the moment was God’s presence with me. In saying I was putting too much comfort in that, you robbed me of the only strength I had. You made me question my experience of God and my utter dependence on him. That did not bring me health.

To the well-intentioned who told me, “Maybe God is withholding His presence so you learn to depend on people,” I know you wanted me to experience the joy of community. I know you wanted me to lean on the Body of Christ. But in saying that, I began to doubt God’s goodness. Why would he withhold his presence from me when I needed it most? I struggle still with fearing the emptiness of God’s silence.

And to the well-intentioned who said, “God must have a lot to teach you,” I have wrestled for years trying to learn my lessons to bring relief to what threatened to swallow me. I know you were looking for a silver lining on a dark cloud, but the pressure to get it “right” so the lesson would be over has pulled me even deeper into the crazy. Your well-intentioned words were condemnation to my desperate desire for the darkness to be lifted.

Simple answers rarely comfort complicated questions. If an easy answer made our hard better, hard would not bear the weight it does.

Please do not hear I am not grateful for your desire to lighten my darkness. I want that desperately too! I know your intentions were for my good. What I want to share is a caution against putting the hard of life in a box. It just doesn’t fit.

Our nature is to try to make life clean and pain contained. After months sitting with the relentlessly hope-speaking counselor, I am at peace with my boxes having been stripped away. I spent so much energy trying to shove my darkness into something I could understand I had no energy left to feel what I needed to grieve.

I know you might be uncomfortable with your own hard. That’s ok. Know that words can be powerful though. They can bring life or they can bring death. Please don’t risk my vulnerable mental health to protect your own fear of life outside the boxes.

I know you mean well. Really, you do. Sit with me. That speaks I’m not alone. Let me cry and rage against my own limitations. That speaks I’m not too much. Hold me when I fall apart and put your hand on my shoulder when words don’t come. That brings comfort I long for.

Be with me. Let me see your eyes feel. I need only to know someone sees my pain.

 

I Will Remember

Posted in Depression, Hope, Musings by

Last Friday was a hard day. I have had two months of better days and even good days. With all-out abandon, I loved them.

Gratefully, I have been waking up in the mornings ready to face the day. I haven’t been driven by when I could nap or how to avoid social situations I didn’t have energy for. I have been able to think clearly again and actually enjoy parts of my day.

There has even been that magical word hope lingering.

NI0YGOJIMK

What a crazy thing depression is. It filters every thought so drastically. One day living in color and the next living a silent black and white.

I don’t know if it is a good thing or not that I have been in this long enough to recognize the monster tainting everything. On Friday I fought hard to remember the experience of joy. Even though its scent still lingered, it felt as if it had vanished in the quiet of the night.

My thoughts drifted to hopelessness. They went right back to the place I had spent months trying to escape.

“There is no point.”

“Life is just a purposeless passing of time.”

“Would anyone even notice if I wasn’t here?”

I felt invisible. Alone. Desperate. I felt it deeply. It totally sucked.

It sucked for many reasons. One is the fatalism it brought. Another is the absolute defeat in thinking there might never be an end to the darkness. One can not live without hope, and that defeat took all my hope with it.

I tried to remember. Even days earlier I had felt fully different. Days earlier there had been purpose and contentedness. I had felt the sun and colors made my heart skip a beat. I knew it was possible for me to live outside the darkness.

Darkness shades everything. Even in recognizing the monster at work, I could not change my perspective. I only hoped it would pass.

I had coffee with a friend. I got my toes done. I bought sunflowers. I texted those who know me and told them the day was hard.

And then I took a nap.

When I woke, the world wasn’t quite so heavy. Hope had not quite returned, but I wasn’t drowning. A full night of sleep brought more energy. A morning at church and afternoon on a football field brought even more. Three days later my heart is full and the sun dances again.

It was a hard day. That’s it. It wasn’t forever.

I will remember it passed. I will remember I chose to do things I knew were good for me. They didn’t make it all better, but they were good choices. Healthy, gracious choices.

I will also remember how my mind turned on a dime. I will remember how twisted my thinking became and how it passed. I will remember putting one foot in front of the other and coming to the other side.

I will remember my resilience. It is where hope dwells.

The Man with the Tattoo

Posted in Musings, Random by

I wish I knew your name, my friend.

You sit down near us in a sea of people, and I am immediately drawn to your story. A tattoo under your right eye jumps from your face, but I can’t distinguish the word it says.

At first you appear a traveler like the rest of us. A heavy olive jacket to keep you warm, a knitted skullcap covering your head. Your large red suitcase showing its years of use sitting next to you.

We sit next to one another at Grand Central in the place where the masses gather to catch a meal or just pass the time. As I blow to cool my tomato soup, you eat too. But you are not a traveler like the rest of us.

GrandCentral

Your meal is in a can. Do you eat cold soup tonight? Or are they beans? You eat with gratefulness, and I am grateful with you.

We sit just feet apart, and everything in me wants to ask you your name and listen to what brought you here. How did you get to this place? What is the word stamped on your face? What does it tell of your story?

You turn to your giant red suitcase, the one packed with all you own. Right there, in the middle of Grand Central Station, you had brought your entire life. You rustle for a moment and then seem content to just reorder.

On the night we sit, it is cold outside. Hot soup warms our insides as layers and scarves warm our skin. Your jacket is not made for this weather. Maybe that is why you are inside. You wear well-worn black Asic sneakers. They are old with scuffed leather and look one size too small. You wear them without socks on this chilly night.

Friend, do you have socks? Does your red suitcase carry warmth to cover your feet?

We sit longer still. You because there is nowhere to go and me because I can’t seem to leave your story behind. I wonder what your name is. I want to hear how you got to this place. What pain do you carry on this night?

You suddenly begin an animated conversation. You talk to the empty chair across from you with passion. And you begin to rock.

As you talk and rock, you push up the sleeves on your worn olive jacket. More tattoos are revealed, and you bear scars. Are they the marks of one seeking healing through the highs of a needle?

Does a needle drive you now, my friend? Are you here but lost in euphoria? I see your eyes, and they look present. I think you are here. I think you see the fullness of reality.

You rock and talk and then you seem to disappear. Where have you gone and what madness has hold of you?

I think of where you’ll sleep tonight, and I hope you’ll be warm. I hope the night takes you to a place where you are known.

I pray joy for you. I pray for someone in your life to bear witness to your suffering. I pray you would know the comfort of human touch and the love of someone who cares about your very precious story.

I pray you would know how deeply you are loved by the God of the universe. He sees you, my friend. He grieves the pain written on your heart. You are worth more to Him than all the silver the world can hold. You are so, so valuable.

God knows your name. Not just the one spoken once by your mother but your true name. He knows you fully.

I can delay leaving no longer. I have to go. I won’t forget this night in a train station in a city I do not live. You have not even seen my face, but I am the one who will pray for you the rest of my days. I will not forget your dark, tattooed face. I have seen you.

And I wish I knew your name.

 

 

The Land of the Living

Posted in Depression, Hope, Musings by

Last week I shared my story with the team I work alongside. They are a grace-filled and safe place. Though answers are few, it is good to be known. It is good to let others help carry my weight. I am grateful for the opportunity to borrow hope.

One who has walked through similar darkness shared a word that challenged me deeply. And planted hope.

I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Psalm 27:13

I needed to hear this. I wish I would have heard it six months ago.

Hope feels to be a magical word when in the world of depression. In fact, my best description of depression is the absence of hope. That is what makes it so, so dark.

One of the places I have struggled most is in what my hope should be placed. I thought my hope should be in the resurrection (and in part, it should). But I also desperately need a hope that isn’t an eternity away.

On my darkest days, I longed for the rest heaven would bring. I didn’t want to die as much as I didn’t want to live. Glory is a great hope, but it is far away. I remember the days glory consumed me. I longed to be relieved of the world. I wanted it all to be over.

QG5Z36E3VM.jpg

During this season, I have clung to God’s word. I have poured over every verse that speaks joy and hope and strength. I have prayed them when I felt the very opposite. I have tried to believe when nothing in me experiences their validity.

When darkness chokes out hope, it is hard to believe there is goodness in the land of the living. It is hard to believe there ever will be goodness in the land of the living.

It is hypothesized several figures from the Bible struggled with depression. David, the author of Psalm 27, is among the most prominent. The psalms read like his ancient blog posts through a darkness of his own.

This verse does not just speak to the hope of glory. It talks about goodness this side of eternity.

So today I am seeking something other than resilience. I am asking for more. I am asking to see the goodness of God in the land of the living.

May the day hasten when I can declare it with the confidence of David.

Limits

Posted in anxiety, Hope, trauma by

I was feeling brave last week.

I was looking for a place to work, and my mind went to the coffee shop I used to love but is now tainted with memories of trauma. I had been once before for a meeting, and it had been hard. Maybe even a little ugly. But I had survived.

Desperately I wanted the physical reminders of trauma to be gone. I didn’t want my heart to race uncontrollably. I didn’t want to feel lightheaded, and I didn’t want to think my stomach might betray me.

I wanted to be able to walk into the darn coffee shop and work the hours away.

But I couldn’t do it.

Danger

Pulling up to the light at the edge of the parking lot, the gravity of my body’s response was too much. The panic grew too strong. My mind could not win the war being waged. I wanted to fight, but instead, I had to flee.

The next hours were spent lying on my couch trying to recover. It didn’t come easily. In fact, it took days.

The past months have been filled with hard work. I have gone to the scariest of places and opened myself to the most vulnerable of emotions. I have pursued healing with relentless passion, and I believe it is coming.

But I still have limits. There are still places that are too tender, too wounded to move past quickly.

Once upon a time, those limits really hacked me off. I didn’t want to acknowledge their boundaries. I resented they were so unyielding.

Today I find myself respecting them. Do I wish they weren’t there? Sure. But I have been growing in grace. Instead of fighting, I’m willing to embrace my limits exist. Those limits are the basis of how I can care for myself.

This is a shaky road I walk. Every step is a risk. But I am seeing the risks pay off. I am seeing kindness replace condemnation. I am making choices that are good, even when they feel like the last thing I want to do.

I can not say enough what a precious thing hope is. Hope is growing friends. It’s growing.

 

 

 

A Parting of the Fog

Posted in Depression, Hope by

62Y9CO7LG4

The clouds outside were dark, and the rain fell and fell until puddles claimed more than not. Grey threatened to invade and take up permanent residence in my psyche. Every hour felt hard.

As I wallowed in my own melancholy and loathing of the darkness, I had coffee with a new friend who has walked a similar road. There were not answers, but there was rest in knowing I’m not the only one. I welcomed the relief of hearing someone else share the same struggle of doubt and fear.

Depression tells many lies. One I hear often is that nobody sees me. I struggle to believe my little story is of any consequence.

On a day that same week, I was at the office later than normal. Another new friend found his way to my space. He reads my words and knows my longing for freedom. He recognizes it because he once had to fight for his own freedom. He is a speaker of hope, and he took time to speak hope to me.

The day that follows brings lunch with an old friend. A friend who knows brighter parts of me. She asks about the hard places because she wants to see them. She is not afraid. She has heard about the darkness for years, and yet she still asks. She speaks light and beauty and grace and hope.

My heart reflects the grey and gross outside my window, but my fog parts for awhile. This is grace. This is God caring deeply for me.

He sent one after another until I relented and could do nothing other than acknowledge His tender care. The lie that tells me nobody sees was crushed for a time. And the dark outside my window did not completely invade. Light came repeatedly through the words of those He put around me.

He is caring for me. Often I can only see the faintest glow right in front of my feet, but with every step I take, it is there. He continues to provide, despite my anxiety and dread otherwise.

This is hope for me. It wavers, and it comes and goes, but I will remember the week it pulsed strong.

It was good.

Hiding

Posted in Depression, Musings by

I’m diving deeper. It is so, so hard.

DE340D0A40

I sat with the hope-speaking counselor today and spoke things I’ve never spoken before. It shocked me. I have spent years burying those thoughts. I did such a good job, in fact, it startled me I could even say them out loud.

For 20 years I have been running from desire. My home taught me feelings are optional. They don’t change the facts. A logical decision is always the right one. Well-intentioned mentors instilled in me the danger of desire. The heart can’t be trusted.

So I got really, really good at ignoring desire. It worked great until the hurt became too much. Disappointment overwhelmed me. I moved from not acknowledging to outright numbing.

Just in case you’re wondering, depression is a great game of numbing. Numbing the bad sounds appealing until you realize it sucks the joy too.

Part of my healing lies in tackling this beast haunting me for two decades.

Last week I told the hope-speaking counselor I was beginning to feel a little brave. He replied with, “Then take a risk.” Today risk is slapping me in the face.

This is risk. This. Choosing to dive into the murky and dangerous black of desire.

What if it spins me out of control? What if I sink in discontent so deeply I’m not able to climb back out?

What if desire cuts even the few thin strings on which my faith is resting?

I write, and I hear, “Nothing is too big for God.” Take the risk.

Last week I listened to a podcast with Dan Allendar and John Eldredge. They were talking about the restoration of the heart. Do you know what Dan Allendar said?

“Hiding is the only thing standing in our way of restoration”

Ouch. I have not only been hiding this place, I have been trying to even forget it is there. I am filled with fear. I am so very afraid of what lies within desire.

There is no good in darkness. It has to come to the Light. I want restoration even more than I want to not expose what I have been hiding.

Help me, Lord Jesus, to be brave.

Practicing Kindness

Posted in anxiety, Depression, Musings by

“Go easy on yourself,” the hope-speaking counselor would say when I left his office. For months, I thought it was just his way of wrapping up.

RCOBXBIYB0

Then I began to hear.

I heard how much I dwell on expectations I didn’t even know I had. I heard my own bitter disappointment in being where I am, struggling desperately to climb my way out of depression and anxiety.

Morning after morning I would wake and want to stay hidden. I would sleep long at night and then sleep my day away too. Tears ran and ran. Previous passions sat untouched. Phone calls went unanswered. I hurt desperately, while at the same time feeling so numb I can hardly breathe.

Why is this happening again? What am I not doing right to have landed me in this place once more?

Why can’t I control it? Why can’t I make it stop?

I despise it. I despise that my body is preparing to flee what no longer endangers me. I’m angry at the darkness washing over me. It holds me captive.

“Get it together,” I plead with myself. “Wake up happy. You’ve had too many days of darkness. Choose light today. Choose joy.”

But I can’t choose, and I hate it.

“Hey, go easy on yourself.”

One day, it is too much. The demons are too loud. I sit in the hope-speaking counselor’s office drowning in condemnation.

“Stop that sh*t,” he says. “This is what is going to happen: From now on, when you start going down that road, you’re going to hear my voice in your head saying, ‘Stop it.’”

He speaks compassion into me, and I hear it. Be kind to myself.

It seems so obvious, but it isn’t. Condemnation comes far more easily than compassion, and sometimes it sneaks in so subtly its presence is there before I know it. Being kind takes practice.

Be kind to myself.

As the memories of trauma sneak up on me, I work hard to practice being kind to myself. My hope-speaking counselor’s voice is turning into my own when condemnation creeps in. I have been practicing. Kindness is beginning to replace rebuke. The work is hard, but the payoff is tangible. The darkness doesn’t always go away, but light is beginning to enter it.

I will continue to practice.

I will be kind to myself.