As a couple and family therapist, I spend a surprising amount of time talking about "the truth." Couples I work with spend vast amounts of time "discussing" (that's putting it politely, in some cases) who remembers an argument correctly and how they can tell when their partner is telling the truth...or not. My non-therapist friends ask me things like, "So what's the truth about marriage? Is it worth or it not?" Academic types like myself do woefully exciting things on Friday nights like read long-winded research articles looking for statistical differences between treatment groups, and I am lucky enough to be in a field that doesn't tend to look for "the truth" and an end-all, be-all answer to the deepest of life's questions about what is love and what is forgiveness and what is trust. Rather, my love for research is fueled by insatiable curiosity and a fascination with the unknown. I'm young and adventurous enough to think it's exciting to search endlessly for something, knowing I will never find one solitary answer. So when I'm doing research at midnight and sitting at my desk drinking green tea and eating a(nother) handful of gummy bears, I don't bother myself with looking for the truth. The search is just as thrilling.
Which brings me to my point...what is the truth? This is why lazy Sunday afternoons are dangerous; my mind takes me on wandering journeys. And I love it. And if you're reading this post, I'm guessing you're not opposed to my wandering mind journeys either. Truth. That's a small word with a complex meaning. As a therapist who ascribes to many postmodern and social constructionist ideals, I believe that truth is what we create. As humans, we are meaning-making creatures. If I look for every possible way you are an untrustworthy, callous jerk, I will probably find all sorts of evidence to back up my truth and prove myself "right." If, however, I look for ways in which you are kind to me or to other people, I can probably find evidence of that, too. I create what I want to create.
Our truths are always overshadowed by our life experiences, our fears, our doubts, our hopes, our desires, our prejudices, our running script of what we "should" do. We never have the exact same carbon-copy truth as anyone else. How beautiful, how messy, how divine, is that?? You and I can have a conversation, and we will both remember it totally differently. We will walk away from the same conversation, the same experience, the same interaction with different feelings, different thoughts, and different ways in which this has impacted our world.
I cannot speak for others. I don't know what your truth is. But as I now have been around on this planet for an (almost) whopping quarter of a century, I have been doing some thinking about what my truth is. So I asked myself, "What truth do I want to create?" Here it goes:
My truth is that we are all children of the light. We are meant to be chasers of humility and sowers of goodness and bringers of joy - I'm talking real joy, not just fleeting, earthly happiness. This is where truth is found: in relationship with one another. We are hungry for connection in our world. We are meant to reach outside of ourselves and touch each other - sometimes in ways that leave deep, lasting marks, and sometimes in quiet ways that leave only faint traces. We are created not for ourselves alone, but for each other, and to honor and follow a God who sacrifices all for us.
So that's it - that's my truth, pure and simple. It isn't a long truth, and I never said I needed it to be right. It doesn't even need to be your truth. In fact, I wouldn't want it to be your truth because I believe you should create your own. My truth comes from a God who is brave enough to say, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" and who constantly, quietly, persistently invites me to follow him through darkness and light alike. So as I continue letting myself fall into a relationship with this God who loves me to so tenderly and so fiercely, I strive to be a tireless seeker of (my) truth and a follower of the light.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Friday, August 8, 2014
Where is Home?
Right now, I'm back home for a weekend visit. I've been thinking a lot about this idea of coming home because, as I was driving back to Arlington yesterday, I realized that I have not one home, but several. And I am truly blessed by that.
For those of you who know me well, you know that strange things make me cry: windmills (yes, windmills), cheesy commercials, a really well painted bookshelf, seeing dads loving on their children. Well, we have a new thing to add to this ridiculous list: dust storms. Yesterday, I was about an hour away from Dallas, when I saw this tiny little dust tornado spring to life and return to the earth as quickly as it had begun. When my first thought was, "Wow, a little piece of home," I was shocked. And it brought tears to my eyes. Why the ridiculous emotions, you may ask? Because this dust storm didn't remind me of my Dallas/Fort Worth home, but my Lubbock home in the West Texas desert. Despite the fact that I have been there a year, it has not truly felt like home to me until the moment I saw this dust storm, so much a part of daily life in West Texas, in an unexpected place.
I spent the next part of my drive reflecting on what it means to have a home. It's not simply a place to live, work, or study, but a place where you find community and connection, setting down roots and growing beyond fences. While Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington will always be my home with the deepest roots, I also consider Waco a second home, and now I can add Lubbock to this list. All these places have been a part of shaping who I am and what I do and who I love.
My DFW home means listening to NPR on long commutes, spilling coffee on my pants in sudden stand-still traffic, soaking up humidity and celebrating unexpected thunderstorms, finding art museums and coffee shops and taco shops on every corner, hiking around lakes, and visiting my grandparents. It is the place where I have countless friends and teachers who remind me of how loved I am and have seen me through years of struggles and heartache and insurmountable joy. This is the place where I remember running on playgrounds and seeing giant hawks on my way to school and standing in long lines at Six Flags and learning how to drive and scaring my mom half to death. It will always be my first and truest home.
I would have denied the possibility of this ever being true if you had told me this when I first got to Baylor 7 years ago, but I deeply miss the Waco home I left 4 years ago. It will forever be the place where I remember late night coffee dates at Common Grounds, imagining what it would be like to dive off the cliffs at Cameron Park into the Brazos River, endless Sic 'Ems, thinking that the halls of Brooks College are really the hallowed halls of Hogwarts, admiring the golden roof of the Chamber of Commerce, driving through rolling hills, and dancing it out with my roommates.
My new Lubbock home reminds me of friendly smiles at the grocery store, a big open sky, stretches of cotton fields as far as the eye can see, and considering it "traffic" if you have to slow down to 55 on the highway for a few minutes. It means falling into deep, spontaneous friendships with people that bring me so much joy and happiness and aren't afraid to call me out of my BS every once in a while. While I love all the cacti and dust storms and jackrabbits in Lubbock, it really is my incredible friends that make this place home.
So while I am a bit surprised that Lubbock has now made it onto the very exclusive list of my homes, I think I've decided to let it stay there. I will continue to let this big town-small city shape me and guide me into the person I am becoming, and I'm excited to see where else in the future I will be able to add to my places I find comfort in as home.
For those of you who know me well, you know that strange things make me cry: windmills (yes, windmills), cheesy commercials, a really well painted bookshelf, seeing dads loving on their children. Well, we have a new thing to add to this ridiculous list: dust storms. Yesterday, I was about an hour away from Dallas, when I saw this tiny little dust tornado spring to life and return to the earth as quickly as it had begun. When my first thought was, "Wow, a little piece of home," I was shocked. And it brought tears to my eyes. Why the ridiculous emotions, you may ask? Because this dust storm didn't remind me of my Dallas/Fort Worth home, but my Lubbock home in the West Texas desert. Despite the fact that I have been there a year, it has not truly felt like home to me until the moment I saw this dust storm, so much a part of daily life in West Texas, in an unexpected place.
I spent the next part of my drive reflecting on what it means to have a home. It's not simply a place to live, work, or study, but a place where you find community and connection, setting down roots and growing beyond fences. While Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington will always be my home with the deepest roots, I also consider Waco a second home, and now I can add Lubbock to this list. All these places have been a part of shaping who I am and what I do and who I love.
My DFW home means listening to NPR on long commutes, spilling coffee on my pants in sudden stand-still traffic, soaking up humidity and celebrating unexpected thunderstorms, finding art museums and coffee shops and taco shops on every corner, hiking around lakes, and visiting my grandparents. It is the place where I have countless friends and teachers who remind me of how loved I am and have seen me through years of struggles and heartache and insurmountable joy. This is the place where I remember running on playgrounds and seeing giant hawks on my way to school and standing in long lines at Six Flags and learning how to drive and scaring my mom half to death. It will always be my first and truest home.
I would have denied the possibility of this ever being true if you had told me this when I first got to Baylor 7 years ago, but I deeply miss the Waco home I left 4 years ago. It will forever be the place where I remember late night coffee dates at Common Grounds, imagining what it would be like to dive off the cliffs at Cameron Park into the Brazos River, endless Sic 'Ems, thinking that the halls of Brooks College are really the hallowed halls of Hogwarts, admiring the golden roof of the Chamber of Commerce, driving through rolling hills, and dancing it out with my roommates.
My new Lubbock home reminds me of friendly smiles at the grocery store, a big open sky, stretches of cotton fields as far as the eye can see, and considering it "traffic" if you have to slow down to 55 on the highway for a few minutes. It means falling into deep, spontaneous friendships with people that bring me so much joy and happiness and aren't afraid to call me out of my BS every once in a while. While I love all the cacti and dust storms and jackrabbits in Lubbock, it really is my incredible friends that make this place home.
So while I am a bit surprised that Lubbock has now made it onto the very exclusive list of my homes, I think I've decided to let it stay there. I will continue to let this big town-small city shape me and guide me into the person I am becoming, and I'm excited to see where else in the future I will be able to add to my places I find comfort in as home.
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Beneath the Surface: Reflections from a Cavern
Have you ever had an experience where you didn't realize your heart was heavy until you realized you were finally and suddenly feeling free from burden? I had this realization during my trip to Carlsbad Caverns yesterday. Logically, I knew the past few weeks had been filled with a near-constant stream of stress, a tidal wave of emotions, and some painful decisions. Despite what I thought, I wasn't fully aware of how this was affecting my body, mind, and soul until I went below the surface (literally) and was able to let go of all this pressure.
At first, it was so exciting to see all these amazing rock formations that have taken thousands and thousands of years to develop, and I was filled with a surge of Look-How-Amazing-All-This-Nature-Is! energy that kept propelling me forward to see the sights. If you're ready for a real mental imagery treat, I truly felt like a puppy pulling on a leash and wanting to run up ahead. We can blame it on the caffeine rush and too little sleep the night before. After some time descending into the cave, though, I felt my hyperactive energy shifting into a state of quiet solitude and contemplation.
While the outer edges of the cavern trails were pretty crowded and filled with noisy visitors, the inner trails became much more sparsely populated. In a moment where we stopped to investigate some stalagmites more closely, I suddenly became aware of how silent it was. Gone were the sultry drips of water, the raucous teenagers, the desert winds, and the calls of the cave swallows. With the exception of my amazing friends/travel partners, there was no one in sight. And in my mind, all that was left for a few moments was a giant stillness. This mental emptying took me by surprise, and it was so beautiful. Usually, absence makes me think of missing something or someone. In this instance, though, the absolute stillness of the air and the absence of noise and thought meant freedom: freedom from distraction, freedom from stacked-up pressures, freedom from a need to take care of others, freedom from worry about the future. And you know what? When all that was gone, I didn't miss it.
I've been reflecting a lot on the idea of letting go of my need to have certainty and to have a plan. While I usually like having some kind of an outline for my life, I feel like I am continually on this journey of learning to be in free fall when life veers from the outline. As I write this, I can hear my mom's words of "There is a time and a place for everything" running through my head. There is a time for planning, and there is a time for trusting. There is a time for staying in the safety of what is known, and there is a time for venturing out into the depths of the unknown spaces of this world.
I found myself thinking of what these caverns must have been like for the early explorers, before there was a lighting system and paved trails and restrooms 79 stories below the earth. And then I start to wonder, what parts of my own heart have I not yet discovered? What depths of God's merciful and mysterious love have I not yet been able to experience? What wisdom have I not yet gained to understand His creation and His people - people with hardened hearts and broken hearts and hearts that are hungry for connection? As I ponder these things in my heart and make space for all the vast unknown, I am slowly and (sometimes) patiently learning to trust in a God who has laid down a trustworthy path for me serve others with deep and courageous love.
At first, it was so exciting to see all these amazing rock formations that have taken thousands and thousands of years to develop, and I was filled with a surge of Look-How-Amazing-All-This-Nature-Is! energy that kept propelling me forward to see the sights. If you're ready for a real mental imagery treat, I truly felt like a puppy pulling on a leash and wanting to run up ahead. We can blame it on the caffeine rush and too little sleep the night before. After some time descending into the cave, though, I felt my hyperactive energy shifting into a state of quiet solitude and contemplation.
While the outer edges of the cavern trails were pretty crowded and filled with noisy visitors, the inner trails became much more sparsely populated. In a moment where we stopped to investigate some stalagmites more closely, I suddenly became aware of how silent it was. Gone were the sultry drips of water, the raucous teenagers, the desert winds, and the calls of the cave swallows. With the exception of my amazing friends/travel partners, there was no one in sight. And in my mind, all that was left for a few moments was a giant stillness. This mental emptying took me by surprise, and it was so beautiful. Usually, absence makes me think of missing something or someone. In this instance, though, the absolute stillness of the air and the absence of noise and thought meant freedom: freedom from distraction, freedom from stacked-up pressures, freedom from a need to take care of others, freedom from worry about the future. And you know what? When all that was gone, I didn't miss it.
I've been reflecting a lot on the idea of letting go of my need to have certainty and to have a plan. While I usually like having some kind of an outline for my life, I feel like I am continually on this journey of learning to be in free fall when life veers from the outline. As I write this, I can hear my mom's words of "There is a time and a place for everything" running through my head. There is a time for planning, and there is a time for trusting. There is a time for staying in the safety of what is known, and there is a time for venturing out into the depths of the unknown spaces of this world.
I found myself thinking of what these caverns must have been like for the early explorers, before there was a lighting system and paved trails and restrooms 79 stories below the earth. And then I start to wonder, what parts of my own heart have I not yet discovered? What depths of God's merciful and mysterious love have I not yet been able to experience? What wisdom have I not yet gained to understand His creation and His people - people with hardened hearts and broken hearts and hearts that are hungry for connection? As I ponder these things in my heart and make space for all the vast unknown, I am slowly and (sometimes) patiently learning to trust in a God who has laid down a trustworthy path for me serve others with deep and courageous love.
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