Seeking Definition

"The farther I run away from the place where God dwells, the less I am able to hear the voice that calls me the Beloved, and the less I hear that voice, the more entangled I become in the manipulations and power games of the world.

It goes somewhat like this: I am not so sure anymore that I have a safe home, and I observe other people who seem to be better off than I. I wonder how I can get to where they are. I try hard to please, to achieve success, to be recognized. When I fail, I feel jealous or resentful of others. When I succeed, I worry that others will be jealous or resentful of me. I become suspicious or defensie and increasingly afraid that I won't get what I o much desire or will lose what I already have. Caught in this tangle of needs and wants, I no longer know my own motivations. I feel victimized by my surroundings and distrustful of what others are doing or saying. always on my guards, I lose my inner freedom and start dividing my world into those who are for me and those who are against me. I wonder if anyone really cares. I start looking for validations of my distrust. And wherever I go, I see them, and I say: "No one can be trusted." And then I wonder whether anyone really loved me. The world around me becomes dark. My heart grows heavy. My body is filled with sorrows. My life loses meaning. I have become a lost soul."

Henri Nouwen

-Return of the Prodigal

p. 47

Typically for me, this is when I get grabby hands. 

Looking for anything and everything that will satisfy.

Wanting to shove down the feelings of loneliness and the ache within and instead rush towards busyness and noise and distractions-just so I don't notice the lack of clarity and meaning within and the heaviness of my heart.

As soon as I do notice, I linger a bit.

Not for the pain, but because admitting I was astray in a place I never meant to be is never a fun activity. So I stay on a little longer but it doesn't get better. 

I start to do inventory and realize the voice of the Beloved is waiting with open arms and there is a feast of goodness if all I will do is return. 

Why not start back immediately? 

Why do I go after life that will not lead me to His table? 

Henri Nouwen summarizes it best again:

"Often, I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of it waves. All the time and energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning show that my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me." (p. 42)

My friends Drew and Ellie Holcomb have covered the song "Heart of the Matter" by Don Henley and I heard it yesterday and it made my soul go "POP!" when I heard it. 

The song has not been released, but Indie Arie did a great version of it as well and this YouTube video has the lyrics written within it which I think are so powerful. 

Even if I'm not loved anymore by others, it is still about forgiveness. 

Solid. 

What is REAL?

Here at camp, without the distraction of the "real world" you tend to have more energy to devote on yourself and pay more attention to the things that perhaps you would like to improve upon, think that God thinks might be more important in your life at home than you have given credit to, and also you struggle. You tend to struggle with your own inner demons.

The things that you think about yourself that no one else knows about.

The quiet here is so deafening that all you hear is your own self-doubt sometimes. It can turn into something great. It can turn into your worst enemy. It all depends on who you turn to in those moments.

My hope is that after all of these years, that I will learn (at some point) to listen to proper voice and that these struggles will help me to continually shed the personality that I "put on" in order to become the person that God has made me to be. Whole and complete. Without doubt. Without fear. It will be great.

Well, that truly is my hope. But unfortunately; I live my life thinking that I need to look like I have already arrived at real. Totally put together. Not a care in the world. I have no issues. No problems. I am me. Me is fine. I look good. Inside and out. My house is clean, my dishes are put away, my kids are nice and polite and life from the outside looks "solid, sweet and what I've always dreamed of." And if it were, then wouldn't that fill me up? Wouldn't I be made whole if all these things were so good? According to the way I have been living, this has been the true goal of my life, not necessarily becoming "real".

How do I know this?

I just finished reading my kids "The Velveteen Rabbit" to put them to bed. And it sort of put me on my back. Do you remember it?

A kid gets a stuffed rabbit for Christmas, he loves it like crazy. He gets scarlet fever, the doctor says everything has to be burned...including the rabbit. Geez. Real upbeat book huh?

But this section here, it has so much to chew on that I don't even know where to start:

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.

But the Skin Horse only smiled.

New goal: Become Real. It may not look pretty all the time. But it will be me. And it doesn't happen all at once. So hopefully I will be okay with it, eventually.

(BTW: that is not my image. It is from this ETSY store. I hope the artist doesn't mind)

It's been quite a year

I am somewhat of a nerd and I own up to that.
So far this year, I have read The Life of Pi and A Thousand Splendid Suns and I just started reading Water For Elephants. Last night I started to read and it was so late, that I only got two chapters into it. But I went to sleep with that blissful feeling of a good book is coming in the next few days. I say days, because I don't linger with books I like. I read them, I eat them like food and I do nothing other than read until I have conquered the book. It is why I can't read or shouldn't read three books that over 300 pages each in one month. Everything else slides to the rear of the importance chain. When I was single, this was no problem. As a mom, wife and employee; this pretty much spells disaster for life around me. You should see the pile of laundry that I had to tackle tonight because I have not folded any laundry since I did it all three days ago. I haven't EVEN started my next book.

Argh.